The First Abstract Paintings

Hilma af Klint painted large non-representational works from 1906 while a member of Theosophical and later Anthroposophical circles. Piet Mondrian joined the Theosophical Society in 1909 and kept Blavatsky's books all his life. Kandinsky cites Blavatsky by name in Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911).

⚠⚠ THE CLAIM MOST PEOPLE FIND HARDEST TO BELIEVE, AND IT IS THE BEST DOCUMENTED THING IN THIS WING. The birth of abstract painting — the defining move of twentieth-century Western art — happens inside Theosophical circles, on purpose, as an attempt to paint the non-material planes. The story that abstraction arose from formal problems inside painting is a later, tidier account. The people who actually did it first were reading Besant and Leadbeater's Thought-Forms (1901), a book of coloured plates purporting to show what emotions look like.