The Ten Largest, No. 9, Old Age - Hilma af Klint
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Description
A monumental abstract work from 1907, exploring the final stage of human life through delicate geometric forms and a soft, warm colour palette.
The Ten Largest, No. 9, Old Age is part of a series of ten monumental paintings created by Hilma af Klint in 1907. These works represent the stages of human life, from childhood to old age. This specific piece explores the final phase of existence through a series of geometric and organic forms. The composition is divided into two distinct sections, mirroring the symmetry often found in af Klint's spiritualist practice.
At the top of the canvas, two large circular motifs dominate the space. These circles are filled with fine, radiating lines that suggest a sense of expansion or cosmic order. Below these, the artist employs simpler, rounded shapes that appear to float against a soft, atmospheric background. The colour palette is dominated by warm, muted tones of peach, cream, and pale pink, which provide a sense of calm and transition.
Af Klint produced these works in a state of heightened spiritual awareness, intending to visualise concepts that exist beyond the physical realm. The forms are not merely decorative; they function as a visual language for the unseen forces of nature and the human spirit. The application of tempera creates a matte, chalky surface that enhances the ethereal quality of the imagery. By moving away from representational art, af Klint sought to map the evolution of the soul. This series remains one of the earliest examples of large-scale abstract painting in Western art history, predating the more widely recognised movements of the early twentieth century. The work invites the viewer to contemplate the cyclical nature of life and the transition into the final stage of being, using geometry as a bridge between the material and the metaphysical.
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Museum-grade giclée on FSC-certified archival matte paper, with framed and canvas options.
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The Ten Largest, No. 9, Old Age - Hilma af Klint
Artist Biography
Hilma Af Klint
She was born in 1862 into a naval family in Stockholm. She showed early ability in both mathematics and botany, studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, graduated with honours in 1887, and established herself as a conventional painter of landscapes and portraits. She also worked as a scientific illustrator, producing botanical drawings of fungi for a book that was never published. In 1919 and 1920 she drew flowers almost daily, creating jewel-toned watercolours with the precision of a naturalist who knew when each species bloomed.
The abstract work came from a different source. She attended her first seance at seventeen. In 1896 she formed a group called De Fem (The Five) with four other women: Anna Cassel, Cornelia Cederberg, Sigrid Hedman, and Mathilda Nilsson. They contacted what they believed to be spirit guides from another dimension and kept meticulous notes. In 1906, aged forty-four, she received instructions during a seance to create paintings for a Temple. She never understood where or what this Temple was, but she began.
The Paintings for the Temple series, 193 works made between 1906 and 1915, includes compositions that are completely abstract. She used a systematic colour symbolism: blue for femininity or spirituality, yellow for masculinity or intellect. Spirals, circles, and intersecting lines represented spiritual forces or natural processes. Where Kandinsky's abstraction looked inward to the artist's own psychology, af Klint believed astral spirits were working through her hands.
She died in 1944. The embargo lifted in 1964, but the work was not shown publicly until 1986. In 2018, the Guggenheim mounted Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future. It drew over 600,000 visitors, the most attended exhibition in the museum's history. She left behind more than 1,200 paintings and thousands of pages of notes.
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