Hilma af Klint Painting Estimated at $800,000 Heads to Auction in Sweden

A Hilma af Klint painting estimated at $600,000–$800,000 will cross the block in Stockholm on November 19. The sale at Bukowskis, a Swedish auction house, represents a rare market event: only two paintings by the artist have ever been sold at auction, both more than 30 years ago, according to the house.

The work is Ser III No. 5 (1920), an abstract canvas included in a Bukowskis sale of modern art and design objects. If the painting reaches even its low estimate, it will shatter af Klint's prior auction record.

Hilma af Klint has moved from the margins of 20th-century art history to its center. A 2018 retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York credited the Swedish artist with inventing abstraction, and the exhibition drew blockbuster crowds. The Grand Palais mounted a survey of her work in Paris earlier this year.

Why does this painting almost never happen?

Af Klint's paintings feature pyramids, looping lines and flowerlike forms, inspired by what she described as encounters with spirits from worlds beyond our own. Her spiritualism led her to conceive of a temple that would house her work. That temple was never realized in her lifetime, and no plan has materialized since, though her great-grandnephew, who chairs her foundation, has sought to build it as a repository that would keep her art out of museums.

The Hilma af Klint Foundation has sought to tightly control how her work is shown, which is why it is rarely made available for sale. According to the foundation, af Klint herself demanded that her art not be commercialized. A plan to forge a relationship between the foundation and David Zwirner gallery fell through after two of af Klint's descendants inveighed against it. The New York Times has reported that the family's stewardship of the legacy generated disagreement behind the scenes at the foundation.

Market appearances are so scarce that each one registers as an event. When David Zwirner exhibited her "Tree of Knowledge" series in 2021, Glenstone, the Potomac, Maryland museum founded by Mitchell Rales and Emily Wei Rales, promptly bought the work.

Where did Ser III No. 5 come from?

Bukowskis stated in its release that Ser III No. 5 is one of 85 paintings af Klint produced during a three-month burst of artistic activity in 1920. The painting has been held by the same unidentified collector since 1995. That collector purchased the work after the foundation made "a small number of works" available for sale in the early 1990s, the house said.

It was not clear to what degree, if at all, the Hilma af Klint Foundation was involved in the plan to sell the painting. ARTnews has reached out to the foundation for comment.

What does this change for the market? A new auction record is nearly guaranteed, and the result will offer the first real price signal for af Klint's work in three decades — a data point that museums and collectors pursuing future rarities will not ignore.