Swan, No. 17

The story of Swan, No. 17

Two swans, one black on a white field and one white on black, curve into each other until their necks and wings close into a single circle. Hilma af Klint painted it in 1915 as part of her Swan series, working in Stockholm for a spiritual audience she believed would arrive decades later. She asked that the paintings stay hidden for twenty years after her death, and they stayed hidden for closer to forty. The Hilma af Klint Foundation holds it now, and since the Guggenheim showed her work in 2018 it has become one of the most shared abstract images of the century.

On a wall, Swan No. 17 is almost graphic. The palette is black, white, a blue-gray circle, and a soft yellow ground, nothing else, so it works in any room that likes clean lines: a bedroom, a bathroom, a meditation space, an entryway, or a home office. It fits Scandinavian, minimalist, monochrome, and modern interiors, and it holds its own next to furniture with strong geometry. It is a square image, and we offer it at the Mini, 8 × 8 in, and the Petite, 11 × 11 in. The Petite is the size for a nightstand wall or a small landing; the Mini belongs on a shelf, a desk, or in a grid of small squares.

Af Klint's Altarpiece, No. 1 is the pyramid-and-sun painting that is her other great geometric image, and The Ten Largest, Adulthood is her looser, larger side. Klee's Senecio is the warm circle to hang beside this cool one. More from Hilma af Klint.

Printed in our studio from a public-domain photograph of the canvas, with the slightly uneven hand-painted edges of the circles left as she made them.