The belated fame of Hilma af Klint

The largest number of visitors recorded at New York's Guggenheim Museum was for an exhibition of work by trailblazing Swedish artist and mystic, Hilma af Klint, that had been hidden away for decades.

Now the work of this pioneer in abstract art is about to go on show here in Aotearoa.

Hilma af Klint at her studio c1895. Photograph courtesy the Hilma af Klint Foundation Stockholm.

Aaron Lister

The Swan No. 1 The SUW Series Group IX 1914–15 By courtesy of the of Hilma af Klint Foundation. Photo by The Moderna Museet Stockholm Sweden.

The Ten Largest 1907. Photo courtesy of Moderna Museet Stockholm Sweden.

The Ten Largest No. 1 Childhood Group IV 1907 By courtesy of the of Hilma af Klint Foundation. Photo by The Moderna Museet Stockholm Sweden.

The Ten Largest No. 3 Youth Group IV 1907 By courtesy of the of Hilma af Klint Foundation. Photo by The Moderna Museet Stockholm Sweden.

The Ten Largest No. 7 Adulthood Group IV 1907. By courtesy of the of Hilma af Klint Foundation. Photo by The Moderna Museet Stockholm Sweden.

City Gallery Wellington is hosting  Hilma af Klint: The Secret Paintings - "secret" because she left instructions that her work be locked away until at least twenty years after her death.

The artist started producing large-scale, brightly-coloured, abstract works in the early 1900s, before her better-known contemporaries like Kandinsky and Mondrian.

At the heart of the exhibition is a series called The Ten Largest - three-metre high paintings, created for a proposed Temple, that she painted in secret over 10 years.

The gallery's senior curator Aaron Lister talks to Lynn Freeman about why Klint, asked her family to hide her paintings for so long after her death.

Hilma af Klint: The Secret Paintings opens at City Gallery Wellington from December 2.