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Hilma af Klint's Paintings for the Temple: a mission guided by angels
Presented at the Grand Palais until August 30, 2026, the Paintings for the Temple is the most ambitious project of Hilma af Klint's artistic life. Visionary, mystical and deeply singular, the Swedish painter developed between 1906 and 1915 a monumental work of 193 paintings conceived as fragments of an ideal spiritual temple.
On January 1, 1906, during a spirit seance, Hilma af Klint heard the voice of an "angel" named Amaliel, who entrusted her with a mission: to produce the Temple Paintings.
At the age of 44, the artist undertook this project with her friends Anna Cassel and Gusten Andersson, before a group of thirteen women gradually joined in this artistic and spiritual adventure.
Divided into eleven series, the ensemble produced explores the spiritual evolution of humanity through a novel visual language blending biblical references, esotericism, theosophy and modern science. The compositions oppose feminine and masculine, good and evil, matter and spirit, in a universe of geometric shapes, vibrant colors and symbols.
It was the big job of my life.
Hilma af Klint, Colombe, n° 2, 1915
A work guided by spirituality
Convinced that her inspiration comes from elsewhere, Hilma af Klint claims to paint without sketches: "The images were painted directly through me, without prior drawing."
In a meditative state, surrounded by several collaborators, she develops a vocabulary of spirals, diagrams and geometric shapes that structure the Temple works. Spiritual "guides" also seem to determine the monumental formats, techniques employed and pace of execution of certain series.
The artist also insists on the collective dimension of this work. In 1917, she noted that the series US was "done with the help of almost the whole group".
Masculine, feminine and duality
In her first series, produced between 1906 and 1908, Hilma af Klint addressed sexuality, the balance of opposites and spiritual transformation. Influenced by anthroposophy, she developed the idea of humanity seeking to rediscover an original unity uniting feminine and masculine. Every color, motif and symbol has a spiritual meaning. Spirals, flowers and diagrams become elements of a language designed to represent the invisible.
Hilma af Klint, Les Dix plus grands, n° 2 (Enfance), 1907
The Ten Largest
Among the exhibition's major ensembles is The Ten Largest, produced in 1907. These huge paintings represent the four ages of life: childhood, youth, adulthood and old age. Quickly executed with the help of Cornelia Cederberg and Gusten Andersson, they blend spiritual symbols and colors associated with each stage of life: blue for childhood, orange for youth, lilac for adulthood and pink and beige for old age. Here, Hilma af Klint uses egg tempera on paper, a technique inherited from Renaissance religious painting.
Touring the Grand Palais exhibition is like following the path Hilma af Klint imagined for the Temple Paintings. In her notebooks from the 1930s, the artist drew a spiral building intended to lead visitors to a sacred space.
This temple never saw the light of day, but the exhibition reconstructs this symbolic progression up to the three Altarpieces of 1915, the spiritual synthesis of the project. Here, Hilma af Klint uses sheets of precious metal capable of reflecting light, echoing the traditions of religious art.
The first altarpiece, visible on the left in the photograph opposite, features a pyramid in the colors of the solar spectrum surmounted by a radiant star. This composition recalls Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's research into color theory, outlined in his Treatise on Colors published in 1810.
