Tate Modern brings together abstract art pioneers Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian, who never met but shared a love of nature

They might be two of the best-known names in early 20th-century modern art, but Piet Mondrian and Hilma af Klint never met. Decades after their death in 1944, they are enjoying a posthumous reunion for a new show at London’s Tate Modern.

With more than 250 paintings, drawings and archival objects, the exhibition “Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life” shows how, even as each artist embarked on their own distinctive journey towards abstraction, good many of the same forces were at play.

The two artists shared a first love for landscape painting and nature before getting carried away by the most radical ideas of their time.

Born in Stockholm, Af Klint was one of the first women to attend the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts and began to make a living creating conventional and naturalistic works, including botanical studies. Her real passion however lay in spiritualism and she became a medium who later claimed that voices told her “to perform paintings on the astral plane”. The result was a highly enigmatic esoteric work that she kept secret for decades. As these paintings became more widely known to the public, many realized that Af Klint was perhaps the very first abstract artist.

Mondrian’s early depictions of plants became increasingly abstract over time, until only the most basic structure of color and line remained. At the same time, the Dutch artist’s interest in movements such as Theosophy and Anthroposophy grew. The minimal grid paintings for which he is best known can therefore be understood as attempts to approach the essential reality of the universe.

Although the two artists arrived at very different destinations at the end of their lives – the swirling masses of Af Klint are a far cry from the more geometric style of Mondrian – the organic world remains for both the universal language through which they have made their biggest breakthroughs.

See some key works from the exhibition below.

Piet Mondrian, The Gein Trees by the water (circa 1905). Photo courtesy of Kunstmuseum Den Haag.