The Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) was a virtual unknown until a 2018–2019 Guggenheim retrospective resurfaced her career to wide acclaim. An overnight sensation more than 100 years in the making, af Klint stunned viewers with monumental, brightly colored abstractions created years before Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, and Piet Mondrian pivoted away from figuration, forcing critics to re-assess the history of the early twentieth century avant-garde. The show, which attracted more than 600,000 visitors and inspired a documentary about her life, immediately elevated af Klint to the ranks of iconic women artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois, and Yayoi Kusama.
