Hilma af Klint

Someone was painting fully abstract work before Kandinsky. Hilma af Klint, in Sweden. Starting in 1906, she began the series The Paintings for the Temple, which grew to 193 works. She never showed them. She believed the world was not yet ready to receive them. That is why this map draws no lines from her to other styles: she had no influence, because no one had seen the work. Instead, in 2018, a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York became the most visited show in the museum's history. It took a hundred years, but the paintings did arrive.