Beyond The Visible - Hilma af Klint

The movie is beautiful, suiting the beauty of Klint's work. It makes a convincing case that Klint was the first abstract painter of the modern era. The film is also usefully political, describing an art establishment that has never made room for women because only men possess "genius." The paintings here are integrated with the sublime natural environment that inspired them, to which Klint added her fascination with science (what we would now recognize as astrophysics, among other natural sciences), contrasts (men and women, black and white, heat and cold), and humanity, its past and future.

What we don't learn here, likely because of insufficient research to date, is the degree that contact with the spirit world, through Klint's seances, was in the mix of Klint's influences.

This movie is also blessedly free of "art talk." The marvelous commentators speak in plain language.

And the paintings themselves are too beautiful to miss.