The Swan No. 10 (1914-1915 CE)

In Svanen nr. 10 (The Swan No. 10), Hilma af Klint reduces the swan to something closer to a spiritual structure than a natural form. The painting does not rely on descriptive detail to create meaning. Instead, it uses division, contrast, and balance to stage an encounter between opposing forces, making the image feel less like a representation of a bird than a meditation on transformation, polarity, and inner change.

A Painting from Hilma af Klint’s Spiritual Project

Created between 1914 and 1915, The Swan No. 10 belongs to one of the most important phases of Hilma af Klint’s work, when abstraction had become central to her attempt to visualize unseen realities. By this time, she was working within a highly developed symbolic system shaped by her engagement with spiritualism, Theosophy, and related esoteric ideas. The painting is part of the larger Swan series, itself connected to the wider body of works through which she sought to move beyond conventional representation and create images capable of expressing spiritual truths.

The Swan as Symbol

In this series, the swan becomes a vehicle for ideas of change, ascent, and spiritual evolution. Rather than being treated as a literal motif, it is transformed into a sign through which af Klint could explore the movement of the soul and the reconciliation of opposites. The image carries a symbolic charge that reaches beyond the visible world, aligning with her belief that art could reveal deeper structures underlying existence.

Her working process was also closely tied to this view. Af Klint believed that her art was guided in part by higher spiritual forces, and she understood many of her paintings as the result of instructions received from beyond ordinary consciousness. That conviction shaped both the seriousness and the ambition of her abstract work.

Divided Form, Unified Meaning

A central feature of The Swan No. 10 is the division of the canvas into contrasting zones. Light and dark, male and female, life and death, separation and union all seem to be held within the composition at once. The painting does not present duality as static conflict, but as a condition through which balance and transformation become possible.

This is one of the strengths of af Klint’s symbolic language. The image feels ordered and deliberate, yet its meaning remains open enough to invite sustained reflection. The swan becomes a point of passage between opposites, rather than a fixed emblem with one stable interpretation.

Structure, Color, and Scale

The painting is an oil on canvas measuring 154 × 154 cm (60.6 × 60.6 inches). Its square format gives the composition a strong sense of containment, while the horizontal division creates a clear visual tension across the surface. Color is used with the same precision as form, reinforcing the work’s concern with polarity and correspondence. The painting’s scale also matters: what might seem diagrammatic in a smaller format becomes physically enveloping here, giving spiritual abstraction a striking visual presence.

Preserved in Stockholm

The Swan No. 10 is held by the Hilma af Klint Foundation in Stockholm, which preserves and promotes the artist’s work. Within af Klint’s oeuvre, it remains one of the more concentrated expressions of her attempt to use abstraction not simply as a formal experiment, but as a means of thinking through spiritual transformation and the hidden structures of existence.