In the manner of Hilma af Klint
Swedish, 1862–1944
The Swan, Recommended, 2026
Tempera and oil on paper and canvas
300 × 240 cm
Never painted.
Commissioned for the collection, 2026.
PAB 2026.12.4
Two swans meet beak to beak in the middle of a circle cut into pink, yellow, blue and violet slices, like a pie chart that has taken up religion. A lotus opens above them. Af Klint painted a whole series of swans about opposites finding their way to each other. The algorithm also brings opposites together. It calls the result engagement and keeps them there.
The brief
Two mirrored abstract swan forms in black and white meeting at the centre of a circle divided into coloured segments like a pie chart. Early twentieth-century spiritual abstraction, large diagrammatic compositions of spirals, concentric circles, petals and snail shells in pale pink, egg yellow, sky blue and lilac on a cream ground, delicate line work with small lettering-like marks, symmetrical mystical schemas, tempera flatness with visible pencil underdrawing. Museum photograph of the painting on canvas, flat even lighting, no frame, no text, no wall, no floor, cropped to the canvas edge.
Written to the house rules. The painter's name does not appear.
Take it home
The painting on this room's wall, at its own proportions, nothing written on it.
