The Dove, No. 1 (1915 CE)

Hilma af Klint’s Duvan, nr. 1 (The Dove, No. 1) belongs to a body of work in which abstract form becomes a vehicle for spiritual thought. Painted in 1915 as part of The Paintings for the Temple, it draws on a highly structured symbolic language of color, contrast, and recurring motifs. The dove suggests the Holy Spirit, while shells, spirals, and shifting zones of light and dark turn the composition into a meditation on love, development, and the reconciliation of opposites.

Within The Paintings for the Temple

The work was created in 1915, during one of the most important phases of Hilma af Klint’s career. It belongs to the larger cycle Paintings for the Temple, the ambitious series through which she developed a visual language for spiritual and philosophical ideas. Af Klint produced more than 1,200 works over the course of her life, and although her abstract paintings were not widely known during her lifetime, she did not keep them entirely hidden. In addition to supporting herself through portraiture and landscape painting in oil and watercolor, she also participated in exhibitions, including at Blanch’s Art Salon, the Art and Industry Exhibition in Norrköping in 1906, exhibitions of the Southern Sweden Art Association, and later a spiritual conference in London in 1928.

The Dove and the Drama of Opposites

Christian symbolism plays an important role in Duvan, nr. 1, above all through the dove itself, which evokes spirit, peace, and unity. At the same time, the painting is shaped by tension rather than stillness alone. The contrast between light and darkness suggests a struggle between opposing forces, recalling allegorical traditions such as the legend of Saint George and the Dragon. In af Klint’s hands, however, conflict is rarely an end in itself. It becomes part of a larger movement toward balance, transformation, and spiritual understanding.

Color as Spiritual Language

The painting’s color system is central to its meaning. Blue and yellow carry symbolic weight, with blue associated with the female and yellow with the male, while their relationship implies complementarity rather than separation. Pink and red introduce an additional register, suggesting a union of sensual and spiritual love. This interplay of colors reflects af Klint’s sustained engagement with spiritual and theosophical ideas, especially the belief that visible form could express invisible realities and that human experience was shaped by dynamic but ultimately reconcilable dualities.

Spiral, Shell, and Growth

The motifs of the shell and the spiral recur throughout the painting and belong to af Klint’s broader symbolic vocabulary. Here they suggest growth, evolution, and unfolding development, reinforcing the work’s concern with movement between states rather than fixed definition. The composition does not read as purely decorative abstraction; it is built as a system of signs through which inner transformation, cosmic order, and the progress of the soul can be imagined.

Scale and Presence

The painting measures 158 × 130 cm (62 × 51 inches), giving its abstract forms a substantial physical presence. Its bold colors and clear motifs allow it to operate both as an image and as a kind of diagram of spiritual relations. The contrast of light and dark, together with the repeated symbolic forms, gives the work its strong internal structure and its meditative intensity.

Preserved in Stockholm

Duvan, nr. 1 is now housed at the Hilma af Klint Foundation in Stockholm. There it remains part of the larger body of work through which af Klint’s contribution to abstraction, symbolism, and spiritual art has come to be understood with increasing clarity.