The Ten Largest (1907)
Gallery 209
Hilma af Klint began to work on The Ten Largest in the wake of a revelation: her spiritual guides instructed her to make “ten paradisaically beautiful paintings” which would give the world a glimpse of the four stages of life. The artist created these works, part of Paintings for the Temple, extremely quickly, probably at least partly on her studio floor due to their massive size. She was assisted by two members of her circle, Cornelia Cederberg and Gusten Andersson.
With a format that was somewhat unusual at the time and painted with tempera—a medium that harks back to the Renaissance and the altarpieces of the Florentine churches that af Klint had admired just a few years earlier during a trip to Italy—these works depict the four stages of life, Childhood, Youth, Adulthood, and Old Age. Like much of the Paintings for the Temple, they also explore themes on the relationship between masculine and feminine.
With a blue background, the first two paintings represent childhood; as the series advances towards youth, colors become more vibrant and takes on a bright orange hue. The different phases of adulthood have a purplish tone, and in old age, the images have ocher backgrounds, become more sober, and include symmetrical and geometric figures. The yellow and blue spirals in the upper part of the initial painting seem to have been drawn with a compass; under them, we can glimpse an almond shape or fish bladder, an ancient symbol that alludes to progression towards unity and culmination. Here, they may depict a deity that has incorporated both the female and the male principle.