🌹 The Rose as the Shape of the Soul—A Gaze at Hilma af Klint

When you hear the term abstract painting, what comes to mind?
A formless form, a nameless meaning.
Yet, something that resonates deep within us.
In this piece, I would like to touch upon the "shape of the soul" depicted by Hilma af Klint through the symbol of the rose.

1. Hilma af Klint, the Talented Realist

Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) was a Swedish-born painter.
She formally studied painting at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts and possessed exceptional drawing skills and realistic technique.

Many of her early works feature intricate, detailed paintings. The lines are precise, the compositions are stable, and there is a serenity backed by solid realistic ability.
She later transitioned to those abstract paintings where circles, waves, and spirals dance, but knowing her educational background and high level of technical skill makes the gap between them quite surprising.

2. Seances and Devotion to the Spiritual World

She was originally an excellent art student who had received an academic education.
However, she gradually became drawn not to the visible world, but to the invisible spiritual world.

Eventually, she stepped into spiritual exploration, such as seances and mystical philosophy. In Europe at the time, interest in such spiritual worlds was widely shared and was something of a trend.

3. The "Rose" as Abstraction—Reading Series IX

The "The Rose or The Swan, Series IX" that she painted does not depict the "rose" as we know it.
There are no soft petals, no fragrance, and no botanical depictions to be found.

So, why is this a "rose"—?

At first, I didn't understand it at all.
However, as I walked back and forth in the museum, repeatedly looking at this Rose series, I gradually became accustomed to her worldview.

If you focus on the circle in the center rather than the blue on the periphery of the canvas, you can see something like an organic structure arranged in an orderly fashion.
It felt as if I were looking into a flower bud from above.

4. The Flower as a Symbolic Form

I do not know if this rose is a flower beginning to bloom or a bud that remains closed.
However, what is there is not the "figure of a plant," but "something that the plant symbolizes"—that is what I came to think.

Perhaps for Hilma, the rose was not a visible flower, but a metaphor for the soul.

The rose is a flower that has been filled with symbolism since ancient times.
In Christianity, it can symbolize the Virgin Mary, or purity, beauty, and sacrifice. The tool used for prayer is also called a rosary.

Perhaps Hilma, while resonating with such symbolism, tried to depict the meaning behind the word "rose" using abstract elements such as circles, ovals, lines, and colors.

5. The Rose May Be the Shape of the Soul

It feels like an attempt to translate into a visual language not the drawing of a flower's shape, but the "totality of the meaning a flower holds"—
symbols of emotions such as love, pain, growth, sacrifice, and beauty.
The roses I grow 🌹 also have an unspoken "order."

The number of petals, the arrangement of the spirals, the Fibonacci sequence, the silence of the buds, the change in fragrance.
To me, they are not language, but existences that work upon the heart as symbols in a mysterious way.
Hilma tried to depict such "symbols" with color, form, and rhythm,

attempting to visualize a soul flower without contours through the medium of painting.
In other words, for Hilma, the "rose" was not the figure of a plant, but

perhaps a metaphor for how the soul blooms and transforms within the universe.

6. Summary: What We Can Do to "Feel" the Rose

The "rose" painted by Hilma af Klint is not something to be seen with the eyes, but something to be felt with the heart.
Perhaps an "inner order" like the one she gazed upon exists even within the flowers we look at every day.

The fact that a single painting can be a record of a soul's journey, rather than just a plant.
—That taught me that painting can become a form of prayer and meditation.

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