The Swan, No.7 (1915 CE)

The Swan, No. 7 is one of Hilma af Klint’s most striking meditations on spiritual unity and transformation. The painting draws the eye immediately toward its center, where four elongated, abstract swan forms reach inward from the corners of the canvas, their beaks meeting in a single radiant point. The composition unites organic movement with geometric order: sweeping curves, crossing diagonals, and a precisely held circular form create a charged balance between motion and stillness. The effect is both serene and electrifying, as if the painting were opening a first clear view into the symbolic universe af Klint sought to make visible.

In Stockholm, at the Edge of Synthesis

Hilma af Klint painted The Swan, No. 7 in early 1915 in her studio on Brahegatan in Stockholm. She was then fifty-two years old and working in the shadow of the First World War. Yet while the world around her was marked by upheaval, her own artistic practice remained intensely inward, guided by visions and written instructions that she believed came from higher, non-physical sources. In the weeks leading up to this painting, she noted that she had been given the task of depicting “the great union,” a moment in which opposing forces merge into a higher reality. The work belongs to a phase in which she had already passed through the most intense period of The Paintings for the Temple and was now moving toward a deeper and more condensed symbolic synthesis.

A Canvas That Held Silence

The making of this painting was accompanied, in af Klint’s own account, by a memorable episode. When Rudolf Steiner visited her studio in February 1915, he is said to have stood unusually long before this canvas. She recorded in her diary that he remained silent for several minutes, absorbed in the image, before finally remarking that it expressed more completely than anything he had seen the moment of spiritual union described in anthroposophy. Af Klint wrote that his response moved her to tears, though she did not fully understand why.

Four Forms Moving Toward One Center

At the heart of The Swan, No. 7 lies the idea of unity emerging from apparent multiplicity. Unlike the more direct duality of black and white found in some of the other Swan paintings, this composition presents four swan-like forms, each entering from a different direction and rendered in distinct tones of white, pink, brown, and yellow-gold. They curve inward in a spiraling motion, their beaks nearly touching at a tiny glowing center. According to af Klint’s own writings, this point marks the dissolution of opposition and the beginning of a new spiritual evolution. The swans are not separate beings so much as expressions of a single movement toward harmony.

The intersecting diagonals and enclosing circle strengthen this sense of convergence, order, and cyclical renewal. In this way, the painting gives concentrated form to af Klint’s conviction that visible reality is only a surface, beneath which deeper forces of transformation work in rhythmic and geometric patterns.

Oil, Diagonals, and a Radiant Core

The work is painted in oil on canvas and measures 150 × 149 centimeters, or 59.1 × 58.7 inches. Its dark ground heightens the luminous arcs and delicate curving bodies of the swan forms, while the diagonal lines, painted in white, yellow, red, and blue, divide the canvas like a compass and give the whole composition an almost cosmological structure. At the center, a small multicolored heart encloses the meeting point, intensifying the work’s inward pull. The technique reflects af Klint’s characteristic union of intuitive image-making with deliberate geometry. Her diaries make clear that the painting was not improvised in any casual sense, but carefully shaped so that each element would carry symbolic weight.

Preserved from Studio to Museum

The Swan, No. 7 remained in Hilma af Klint’s possession until her death in 1944. She kept it rolled and carefully preserved. Today, the painting belongs to the Hilma af Klint Foundation and is deposited at Moderna Museet in Stockholm.