Primordial Chaos, No. 16 (1906-1907 CE)

Swirling forms and charged color give this painting the feeling of primordial chaos. Rather than depicting chaos as mere disorder, Hilma af Klint presents it as a state of active formation, where opposing forces are still separating, meeting, and taking shape. The image feels suspended at the threshold of creation, as though the world is only beginning to organize itself into visible form.

An Early Step into Abstraction

Created between 1906 and 1907, Primordial Chaos, No. 16 belongs to the Primordial Chaos series, a group of twenty-six paintings that forms part of Hilma af Klint’s larger project The Paintings for the Temple. This was the first major phase in which she turned decisively toward abstraction, developing a visual language for spiritual and metaphysical ideas at a moment when such work had almost no established place in the art world. The series marks an important beginning in her practice, both formally and conceptually.

Chaos as Spiritual Beginning

Af Klint’s thinking during this period was deeply shaped by Theosophy and related esoteric currents. In this context, primordial chaos did not simply mean confusion or destruction. It referred to an original state before unity had fully broken into separate forms, a condition in which the elements of existence were still in the process of differentiation. The painting reflects that idea clearly. Its shifting shapes and dynamic composition suggest a world in movement, where life begins through division, tension, and transformation rather than calm stability.

A Visual Language for the Invisible

What makes this work so significant is the way it uses abstraction not as stylistic experiment alone, but as a means of conveying ideas that af Klint believed could not be expressed adequately through conventional representation. The painting belongs to her broader effort to create a symbolic visual system capable of addressing duality, unity, spiritual development, and unseen realities. In that sense, it is not only early abstraction, but highly purposeful abstraction—built to think through concepts rather than simply depart from naturalism.

Color, Motion, and Emerging Form

The painting is executed in oil on canvas and measures 53 × 37 cm (20.9 × 14.6 inches). Its composition is structured through flowing forms and vivid color contrasts that suggest movement and instability. Nothing feels entirely fixed. The shapes appear to hover in a state of becoming, reinforcing the sense that the work is concerned with origins, flux, and the unstable energy of creation. Af Klint’s use of color is controlled, but never inert; it helps give the surface both symbolic charge and visual movement.

Preserved in Stockholm

Today, Primordial Chaos, No. 16 is part of the collection of the Hilma af Klint Foundation in Stockholm. Like much of her work, it remained little known for decades after her death, but it is now recognized as a key example of her pioneering role in the history of abstract art and of her unusual attempt to join spiritual inquiry with a new visual language.