The US Series, No. 7 (CE)

Hilma af Klint’s The US Series, No. 7 is one of the most powerful and unsettling works in the history of abstract painting. At first encounter, the viewer faces a towering vertical composition in which sacred symbols appear dramatically reversed: a black-grey dove at the top, a radiant golden cross suspended in a white circle, a large grey-white oval, a heavy black cross pointing downward, and, at the very bottom, an inverted winged bird hanging head-downward against an expanding rainbow that opens into a blood-red triangle. Though entirely non-figurative in form, the painting carries the force of a silent, apocalyptic diagnosis of the spiritual condition of humanity.

The Final Series of the Temple Paintings

Completed in just three days, between 8 and 10 November 1920, No. 7 belongs to the twelfth and final series of Hilma af Klint’s life’s work, a group she titled Utan Svar (Without Answer), now known as the US Series. At the age of fifty-eight, after more than two decades of mediumistic painting guided by the spiritual beings she called the High Masters, Hilma regarded this series as the conclusion of the great temple cycle she had begun in 1906. When the final brushstroke was laid on No. 7, the High Masters told her that her commissioned work was complete, and she largely stopped making large esoteric paintings after that.

The Painting That Exhausted Her

Hilma described No. 7 as the most difficult and physically draining painting she ever made. On the third day, while working on the inverted bird, she suddenly felt as though she herself were hanging upside down, became dizzy, and had to lie down for two hours. After finishing the canvas, she wept for three consecutive days. In her notebook she recorded the words of the High Masters: “This is the last thing you need to show. Then the temple paintings are completed.” She considered the painting so stark that in later instructions she singled it out as the one that should wait longest before being shown publicly. It remained hidden for ninety-eight years and was first exhibited only in 2018–2019 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

A World Turned Upside Down

Within Hilma af Klint’s esoteric cosmology, No. 7 functions as a concentrated image of humanity’s condition in the modern age. Everything that would normally rise toward the divine has been turned upside down: the dove of the Holy Spirit is inverted and darkened, the golden cross of divinity hovers at a distance above, while a black cross plunges downward into matter, and the original spiritual human being, shown as a winged seraph, hangs like a bat, bound to the earth. Hilma summarized it in 1920 with unusual clarity: “No. 7 shows man between the golden cross and the black cross. Everything is turned upside down in the outer world, but in the inner being order can be restored.” Scholars often describe it as her most prophetic and post-Christian image, not blasphemous or destructive, but a vision of an age in which spirit has descended fully into matter, carrying within that inversion the possibility of future ascent.

Oil, Geometry, and Reversed Light

The painting is executed in oil on canvas and measures 154 × 115 cm, or 60⅝ × 45¼ inches. In the upper section, the colors are laid in thin, translucent layers, becoming richer and more radiant toward the lower rainbow zone, where wet paint was allowed to flow and blend directly on the surface to create a living, vibrating effect. A precise pencil underdrawing governs the geometry of the twenty-two small crosses and floral motifs surrounding the central oval, while the background shifts from cold grey-white above to a reversed spectrum that culminates in the intense red triangle at the base.

Hidden for Decades, Seen at Last

The work remained in Hilma af Klint’s possession until her death in 1944 and then passed to her nephew, Erik af Klint. It is now owned and preserved by the Hilma af Klint Foundation in Stockholm. Its public debut came only in the landmark 2018–2019 exhibition Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, where it was installed alone on the final wall of the ramp and lit dramatically from below, so that the upside-down seraph seemed to float outward toward the viewer. Since then, it has been shown only rarely and continues to be regarded as the emotional and spiritual climax of her entire production.