A Swedish auction house will sell an abstract painting by Hilma af Klint, an artist whose work almost never comes to market.
The painting, titled Ser III No. 5 (1920), will be sold by the Stockholm-based Bukowskis house during a November 19 sale of modern art and design objects. It has been given an estimate of $600,000–$800,000, and if it reaches even its low estimate, the work will shatter af Klint’s prior auction record.
Once a relatively obscure figure within 20th-century art history, af Klint has come to be seen as a giant of her time. A hit 2018 Guggenheim Museum retrospective in New York credited her with inventing abstraction.
The Swedish artist’s paintings, often composed of pyramids, looping lines, and flowerlike forms, were inspired by her encounters with spirits from worlds beyond our own. Her spiritualism led her to conceptualize a temple to house her work that was never realized. Her great-grandnephew, who also chairs her foundation, has sought to realize that temple, which would act as a repository for her art and keep it out of museums, but no such plan to open the structure has materialized yet.
Though af Klint’s work is increasingly being shown in art museums, with the Grand Palais having mounted a survey in Paris earlier this year, it’s unusual to see her work pop up in commercial galleries and on the auction block. So rare are market opportunities that anytime one does happen, it’s considered an event. When David Zwirner gallery exhibited her “Tree of Knowledge” series in 2021, the work was promptly bought by Glenstone, a museum in Potomac, Maryland, founded by Mitchell Rales and Emily Wei Rales.
Af Klint’s 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 potential relationship between the foundation and David Zwirner fell through after two of af Klint’s descendants inveighed against it. (The family’s controversial stewardship of af Klint’s legacy has reportedly generated disagreement behind the scenes at the foundation.)
Bukowskis said that Ser III No. 5, one of 85 paintings af Klint produced during a three-month burst of artistic activity in 1920, had been held by the same unidentified collector since 1995. The collector purchased the work after the foundation made “a small number of works” available for sale in the early ’90s, the house stated in its release.
According to Bukowskis, only two of af Klint’s paintings have ever been sold at auction, “both more than 30 years ago.”
It was not clear to what degree, if at all, the Hilma af Klint Foundation was involved in the plan to sell Ser III No. 5. ARTnews has reached out to the foundation for comment.