Hilma af Klint: " When Spirits are guiding Your Hand"

Gertrud Sandqvist -" When Spirits are guiding Your Hand"
Evening Lecture at the 23 Augut 2010 @ Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts 2010; ©2010 Laura Kokoshka, Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts, Gertrud Sandqvist;

Art and the unconscious as specific categories were formed at the same time, in late the 18th century. They have haunted each other since then. Something in art seems to be wide open, even conditioned by the unconscious, no matter how often artists and art critics try to keep art in place as perfectly intelligible. And the unconscious seems to be best understood throught art - even Sigmund Freud admitted that.
Between 1906 and 1922, the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint made over one thousand secret paintings. According to her, spirits werde guiding her hand in a very literal way. Ever since her secret work was shown in 1985, she has been considered as a test case to the sources behind early abstract art. But it is even more in- teresting to take her at her own word, and enter the unconscious world she is showing us.
Gertrud Sandqvist is Professor in the Theory and History of Ideas of Visual Art at Malmä Art Academy, Lund University, Sweden. She has been a board member of the National Foundation for Swedish Culture of the Future since 2003. Since 2007 she has been chair of the steering committee of KUNO, the network organization of all Nordic Art Academies and she is a member of the international board of Maumaus-escola des artes Visuales, Lisbon. Gertrud Sandqvist writes extensively on mainly Nordic and Eurpean Contemporary Art.