First Lines of Julia Voss' "Hilma af Klint"

 "What kind of world was Hilma af Klint born into in 1862? Which paths were set, which doors were closed, and which were open to a young girl? When the English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft visited Sweden at the end of the eighteenth century, she was appalled by what she saw." 

- Julia Voss, Hilma af Klint, a Biography

I only recently discovered Hilma af Klint's amazing paintings. She creates colorful organic mandala-like patterns that pulse and vibrate with life. This book is one of the first biographies that I know of her life. It's interesting and readable and filled with reproductions and full-color prints. So far my only quibble is that while i'm gaining insights into af Klint's life, it doesn't have the immediacy of seeing her life though her personality (like, say, John Richardson's Picasso bios) perhaps due to the lack of primary materials. Still, there's a lot to learn about af Klint's situation and motivations; one of the most interesting so far is that her work drawing illustrations for veterinarian reference books inspired some of her best paintings:

"The photographs' black backgrounds set off the bright circle of the petri dish where the tiny life forms swarm and grow. Hilma would later use the composition in the 1907 series The Large Figure Paintings, which looked at the world as if through a microscope." p. 108  

I have a print of The Ten Largest No 2 - Childhood and this book helps me to explore it's depths though the eyes of it's creator - no small feat.