Modernism, Abstraction and Spirituality: Barbara Hepworth and Hilma af Klint

Focusing on the writings and sculpture of the British artist Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975), with some comparison to the work of Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), this chapter discusses the intersections among modernism, abstraction, and spirituality. While the genesis of abstract art was clearly tied to spiritual ideas current in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, that relationship has been suppressed in art history and modernist studies, an elision that has had significant implications for the critical reception of women artists such as Hepworth and af Klint. Variously describing herself as a pagan, a Christian Scientist, an Anglican Catholic, and an atheist, religious faith was central to Hepworth’s sculptural vocabulary and convictions about the affirmative potential of modern sculpture. Similarly, af Klint’s ground-breaking cycle of 193 works, collectively titled The Paintings for the Temple , was quite literally guided by her spiritualism and mediumship. Each bold, visionary, and uncompromising artists, the chapter illustrates how the spiritual underpinnings of Hepworth’s sculpture and af Klint’s painting disrupt canonical narratives about formalism and modernist innovation.