Wheat and Wormwood - Hilma af Klint
Archival giclée
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Description
A delicate watercolour study by Hilma af Klint, exploring the organic forms of wheat and wormwood through fluid, abstract colour washes.
This watercolour study by Hilma af Klint demonstrates her unique approach to botanical observation, where scientific inquiry meets spiritual abstraction. The work features two distinct organic forms rendered in a fluid, translucent medium. The left form, representing wheat, displays a vertical, elongated structure with a dark, textured core surrounded by soft washes of pink and orange. The right form, representing wormwood, presents a more circular, layered composition, transitioning from a central blue core through shades of green to a bold, irregular red border.
Af Klint, a Swedish artist, is recognised for her early contributions to non-representational art. While she is often associated with large-scale esoteric paintings, her smaller studies reveal a meticulous attention to the natural world. In these works, she does not merely document the physical appearance of plants; she attempts to capture their essential character or energetic signature. The application of paint is spontaneous, allowing the water to dictate the spread of pigment across the paper surface. This technique creates soft edges and gradients that contrast with the precise, handwritten labels identifying the subjects.
These botanical sketches were produced during a period when the artist was deeply engaged with theosophical and anthroposophical ideas. She viewed the natural world as a manifestation of hidden forces, and her artistic practice functioned as a method of visualising these invisible structures. The composition is sparse, placing the two subjects against a neutral background to focus the viewer on the interplay of colour and form. By isolating these specimens, af Klint invites a contemplative engagement with the subject matter, moving beyond traditional illustration into a realm of symbolic representation. This print captures the delicate balance of her technique, preserving the original paper texture and the subtle bleeding of the watercolours.
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Each print is produced to order using 12-colour giclée printing on FSC-certified archival paper. Designed in Britain and printed at your nearest production hub to reduce waste and speed up delivery.
Care and materials
Specific Features
Every Solis piece is made to order with archival, gallery-quality materials built to last.
- Museum-grade giclée printing for rich, fade-resistant colour
- Archival matte fine-art paper, FSC-certified
- Multiple sizes and framing options available
- Frames in black, natural wood, dark wood or white
- Framed prints arrive ready to hang
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- Dust gently with a soft, dry cloth
- Avoid prolonged direct sunlight
- Never use liquid cleaners on the print or canvas surface
- Keep in a dry, room-temperature space
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Materials & Sizing
Museum-grade giclée on FSC-certified archival matte paper, with framed and canvas options.
- Paper sizes: A4, A3, A2, A1, A0 and B2 (50×70 cm)
- Canvas: XS (20×30 cm) to Large (60×90 cm)
- Frames: black, natural wood, dark wood or white
Wheat and Wormwood - 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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