Hilma af Klint’s family criticizes the NFT sale of the artist’s sacred paintings

NFTs based on the Hilma af Klint series Paintings for the temple came to auction on 14 November, when publisher Goda invited buyers to “secure your piece of history”. But with the artist’s family refuting the moral validity of the sale, the transaction has been scrutinized.

Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was a “remarkable woman” and “wonderful visionary” (to quote Pharrell Williams and Kaws, the instigators of the NFT drop). Primarily a mystic and medium, she left behind a body of mainly abstract work inspired by her close engagement with spiritual philosophies, including Theosophy and Anthroposophy.

Af Klint had a message for humanity and according to Daniel Birnbaum – a longtime champion of her work, whose company Acute Art created a virtual reality temple to “house” Paintings for the Temple—the digital sphere provides a perfect medium for her vision to be delivered. Through the sale of NFTs, “the temple will be owned by people all over the world,” says Birnbaum, who is also a board member of the Hilma af Klint Foundation.

However, the ownership rights transferred with the NFTs can ring hollow. Tokens are not sold by the Hilma af Klint foundation, established in 1972 to preserve and manage the legacy of the artist, but by Acute Art and the publisher Bokförlaget Stolpe. Stolpe is the publishing arm of the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit, one of Sweden’s largest private foundations, which supports scientific research.

Three people from the Ax:son Johnson Foundation, including managing director Kurt Almqvist, also sit on the board of the Hilma af Klint Foundation, and run it efficiently, says Johan af Klint. Johan was formerly chairman of the Hilma af Klint foundation and devoted a large part of his life to bringing the work of his great-aunt to critical acclaim. It is through this complicated web of board relations, which inevitably creates all kinds of conflicts of interest, that the sellers gained access to digital images of the work.

Johan af Klint and his niece Hedvig Ersman feel responsible for protecting their ancestors’ artistic and spiritual heritage and have expressed strong objections to the sale. Also, NFTs can constitute copyright infringement: the digital works are sold by a third party who does not own the originals. As an example, Goda founder Todd Kramer tweeted an installation view of Hilma af Klint’s NFTs presented in his gallery: in other words, jpeg files, widely available online, here uploaded on individual screens.

Despite the fact that the copyright expired in 2014, the perpetual protection of moral rights to the work can still be implemented: As the descendants point out, Hilma af Klint did not want her creations to be commercialized. While the artist sold her naturalistic paintings, she kept her abstract work secret and shared it only in anthroposophical circles, including with her spiritual guru Rudolf Steiner. Af Klint is also intended for Paintings for the temple series to be held and displayed together as one meta-project: a project to connect with the divine. The sellers did not respond to an invitation to comment on the Af Klint family’s claims that the NFTs are invalid.