While perusing the Arlington Public Library’s List of Books You May Have Missed Last Year I spotted The Art and Life of Hilma af Klint written by Ylva Hillström and illustrated by Karin Eklund. I vaguely recognized af Klint’s name and popped it onto my list since a YA non-fiction was on my to read and this one struck my fancy, especially once I found out that Hillström is a curator at the Modern Art Museum in Stockholm. Woohoo for museum people writing books outside of the stuffy halls of academia!
What I neglected to catch on to was that this was for younger readers than I thought. In fact, its Goodreads description opens with the fact that it is, in fact, a picture book. (Look at that, I went from not reviewing any I could remember in over 12 years to two in the same month!) What we get is a biography introducing readers to the life and art of Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), and she’s a bit of a standout character even if she never attained the notice she should have in her own lifetime since she began painting abstract art as early as 1906, before the accepted birth of modern abstract art with artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich.
The Art and Life of Hilma af Klint aims to tell the whole story of af Klint, from her growing up years, to the loss of her sister and how that opened her up to the spiritual side of the world, to her time at art school and the women who she formed “The Five” based on their theosophy beliefs with and the art she created both before and after she decided to open herself up to what she described as instruction from the spirit world. I thought the work did a nice job of explaining her beliefs and how they impacted her work, but a less good job of explaining her queerness or even really acknowledging it outside of one illustration. But that said, Karin Eklund’s illustrations, as well as the reproductions of af Klint’s works, are great and will really help pull the reader in, as this is a much wordier picture book than Hardly Haunted.
CBR16 Sweet Book: New. I’m still new to the world of reviewing picture books as a grown-up and Hilma af Klint’s art is mostly new to me as well.