NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art opened an exhibition showcasing MoMA’s recent acquisition of Nature Studies, a portfolio of 46 botanical drawings by the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), which is on display for the first time. On view from May 11 through September 27, 2025, Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind Flowers explores af Klint’s engagement with the natural world. Created during the spring and summer of 1919 and 1920, the Nature Studies portfolio presents the wonders of Sweden’s flora and showcases the artist’s keen botanical eye. Af Klint combines her renowned approach to abstraction with traditional botanical drawing, juxtaposing detailed renderings of plants discovered in her surroundings with enigmatic abstract diagrams.

Examples include a sunflower paired with concentric circles, a narcissus crowned by a pinwheel of primary colors, and tree blossoms accompanied by checkerboards of dots and strokes. Through these forms, af Klint seeks to reveal, in her words, “what stands behind the flowers,” reflecting her belief that studying nature uncovers truths about the human condition. Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind Flowers is organized by Jodi Hauptman, The Richard Roth Senior Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, with Kolleen Ku, Curatorial Assistant, and Chloe White, Louise Bourgeois Fellow, Department of Drawings and Prints. Realized with the participation of the Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm.

The exhibition focuses on the years 1917 to 1922, contextualizing the MoMA portfolio and highlighting a pivotal shift in af Klint’s practice. In 1917, no longer satisfied with only receiving direction from spiritual guides, af Klint embarked on a path of self study, culminating in the Nature Studies drawings. The exhibition opens with this new approach, seen in her adoption of an abstract diagrammatic vocabulary in works like the 1917 Atom series, one of many key loans from the Hilma af Klint Foundation in Stockholm. This section also highlights in landscapes and botanical drawing her ongoing dedication to observation. As af Klint noted, “First, I shall try to penetrate the flowers of the earth; use as a point of departure the plants of the earth.” The second section focuses on the Nature Studies, along with related notebooks that allow visitors to experience af Klint’s reflections on the plants she studied, as well as botanical source materials. The final section presents her ongoing interest in exploring the connection between nature and spirituality, but with a new method. In the 1922 series On the Viewing of Flowers and Trees, af Klint employs a wet-on-wet watercolor technique, using vibrant color to express the spiritual power of plants.

“While we often think of artists of the early 20th century as focused on new technologies— and the hustle and bustle of modern life—for many, the natural world was a crucial touchstone. MoMA’s Nature Studies reveal af Klint as an artist uniquely attuned to nature. We hope that attunement—her demonstration of careful observation and discovery of all that stands behind the flowers—encourages our audience to look closely and see their own surroundings, whether here in the city or beyond, in new ways,” says Hauptman.

The exhibition reveals, for the first time, the extent of af Klint’s plant knowledge and the ways her botanical experience shaped her artistic vision. Through research for this exhibition, seven previously unknown drawings by af Klint of mushroom species, commissioned by the renowned Swedish mycologist M. A. Lindblad, were discovered in the archives at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. They have been loaned to MoMA, and shown in the US for the first time, to demonstrate af Klint’s commitment to close observation of the natural world and her drawing within a scientific context. The discovery was made through the research collaboration of Dr. Lena Struwe, director of the Chrysler Herbarium at Rutgers University and professor at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, a contributor to the exhibition and its catalogue; and Dr. Johannes Lundberg, curator in the Department of Botany at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, who identified this previously unknown group of drawings. Further, as a crucial element of the exhibition’s research, MoMA associate conservator Laura Neufeld conducted the first- ever technical analysis of af Klint’s methods and materials on paper.