Directed by Halina Dryschka
Featuring Josiah McElheny and Julia Voss
Running time: 1 hour and 34 minutes

by Fiona Underhill

While not an art expert by any means, I know my way around art from the first half of the twentieth century more than the average person, I would say. It’s a keen interest of mine; I own many books on the subject and have visited art galleries in many European and North American cities, including the Scandinavian cities of Oslo and Copenhagen. Two of my favorite artists are the abstract painters Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. So, in 2018, when I heard about a new exhibition at the Guggenheim in New York by an artist named Hilma af Klint and then saw the paintings online, my jaw dropped to the floor. I had never heard of this Swedish artist, who was a contemporary of both Klee and Kandinsky. When I saw her paintings, I fell immediately in love. The geometric designs in bright rainbow colours are vividly beautiful. My emotions started with guilt and shame that I had never heard of this artist before, but this fairly quickly turned to anger – why had I never heard of her?