In a new interview with Hyperallergic, Erik af Klint, board chair of the Hilma af Klint Foundation and the artist’s great-grandnephew, doubled down on his stance that the late Swedish artist’s body of work should be removed from institutional and commercial curation entirely.
Citing a clause in one of the foundation’s statutes, Erik initially told the Swedish news outlet Dagens Nyheter that Hilma’s creations can’t be classified as artwork but rather as transcriptions of her communications with the spiritual world, arguing that these should be held in a temple only open to spiritual seekers that meet the criteria set by the foundation.
In a phone call with Hyperallergic this weekend, Erik additionally pointed to the fourth statute implemented by his grandfather (Hilma’s nephew), who inherited the artist’s work and developed the foundation in 1972 to steward it. Translated from Swedish, the statute stipulates that the board of the foundation “must keep the work available to those who seek spiritual knowledge or who can contribute to the work of fulfilling the mission that Hilma af Klint’s spiritual guide intended for it in the future.”
The statute goes on to state that “the board shall take care to make the work available only to individuals who have a sympathetic attitude toward the foundation’s purpose and who will not misuse it.”
Erik, who became the foundation’s chairperson only two years ago, told Hyperallergic that “ both parts of that paragraph are equally important,” noting that the statute’s second sentence specifies that Hilma’s legacy must only be available to a certain subset of people and not the general public.
“I cannot overlook one or the other,” he continued. “That is what has been done for many years, but when they started to sell socks and NFTs of Hilma’s art, it was just too much.”
In 2023, Erik filed a lawsuit against the other board members and the foundation’s CEO, accusing them of personally profiting off Hilma’s legacy by licensing original works that were minted into NFTs and sold. (It’s not immediately clear whether the lawsuit is moving forward.) Erik also went head-to-head with the other board members last December as the lone dissenting voice against a deal that would have made David Zwirner the representing gallery for the foundation, lambasting the proposal as a “hostile takeover” that would contribute to the risk of Hilma’s “commercialization.” This February, he filed a petition with the Stockholm District Court demanding that all other board members must resign except for him.
Per the foundation’s rules, the board chair must be a descendant of the artist and a majority of the trustees must be members of the Anthroposophical Society, which Hilma took great interest in alongside other alternative spiritual movements in her lifetime.
While the foundation is also allowed to consider the sale of certain works from the trove of Hilma’s 1,300 paintings in order to finance the preservation of other works in the collection, Erik has denounced the sale of any of her works, maintaining that they function together as the artist intended and should not be separated or commercialized.
“ I am one against four board members, and we are a democracy — if they vote four against one, then I have to submit to that decision even if it goes against the statute,” Erik clarified. “So my only way to protect the statutes is to go to Swedish authorities and say, ‘My board isn’t adhering to the laws of the foundation.’”
With regard to pulling her work from institutions and galleries completely, Erik told Hyperallergic that “ for Hilma, this is a holy body of work, and she herself wrote and sketched out ideas” for a spiral-shaped temple for her paintings after being instructed to do so by a spirit.
Relegated to the sidelines for its abstract and cross-spiritual subject matter, Hilma’s legacy emerged from relative obscurity after a landmark 2018 exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York caused her paintings to explode in popularity.
“I believe there’s a meaning in everything, so when God allowed Hilma to be viewed by the world in this way, there was a purpose to that,” Erik continued. “And the purpose was to create an interest. When she is removed from the public, the people who are truth-seekers will come after her, and they will be the ones who build the temple. They will be the ones who will see the value of looking at the physical art, knowing that [there] is nowhere else in the world you can go to see it.”
In a statement shared through a spokesperson, Hilma af Klint Foundation board members Ulf Wagner, Katarina de Voto, Juhani Selvani, and Anders Kumlander expressed that “the majority [of the board] believes that Hilma af Klint’s art should be accessible to both the public and researchers,” and noted that the foundation has embarked on an external investigation to explore the possibility of developing a permanent museum to house Hilma’s creations.
“However, there have been discussions regarding the interpretation of the Foundation’s statutes — the board has, for several years, allowed this matter to be investigated by experts and has concluded that the text must be interpreted in a more contemporary context,” their statement continued.
Stating that the board has the final say on how the statutes are interpreted, the trustees said that they adhere to the aforementioned investigation and are working to keep Hilma’s work available to those who wish to see and learn from it — “just as the previous boards have done before us over the years.”
The board members did not comment on Erik’s recent petition and said that the foundation is continuing its work as usual despite the ongoing debate.
