A proposed deal between the Hilma af Klint Foundation and David Zwirner gallery has hit a roadblock after it was opposed by the artist’s great-grandnephew Erik af Klint. He has described the potential agreement as a “hostile takeover” that risks commercializing af Klint’s legacy. Erik’s father Johan, former chair of the foundation, echoed his son’s concerns.

Zwirner has refuted the claims. “The idea that we are about to ‘plunder’ the foundation is completely absurd. We’re a seasoned estate-managing gallery,” he countered. “They would like to shut everything down and do nothing,” he added, describing this approach as “sabotage.”

The resurgence of interest in once-marginalized artists has resulted in a fleet of prestigious museum shows for historical artists who were once relatively unknown. It has also presented an exciting commercial opportunity, with galleries vying to snap up great artists’ estates. In exchange for potentially huge profits due to what is often a limited supply of works, these businesses offer considerable experience in cultivating an artist’s market and critical standing over the long term.

Over the past decade, Swedish artist Hilma af Klint has been heralded as the true originator of abstraction in Western art, a new female figurehead for an otherwise male-dominated modernist art movement. Her name has gone global and this success story shows no signs of slowing, with an exhibition currently at Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain and more shows planned for next year at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo and at the MoMA in New York.

At the same time, the Hilma af Klint Foundation, set up in 1972, has been rocked by infighting over who should control the artist’s legacy and what exactly this responsibility entails. According to its statutes, the foundation’s board must be chaired by a member of the af Klint family with its trustees selected from the Anthroposophical Society.

Installation of Hilma af Klint Exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery on March 2, 2016 in London, England. Photo: David M. Benett/ Getty Images for Serpentine Galleries.

The four current trustees were appointed by the Administrative Court in Stockholm and attempts to repeal this decision by the family have not been successful. Tensions between the af Klints and the foundation’s trustees escalated last year when Erik filed a lawsuit accusing the board members and the foundation’s CEO of seeking to profit from various improperly authorized deals that would see both NFTs and an immersive experience created from af Klint’s work. These allegations have been denied.

Now, Erik is clashing once again with the board’s four trustees over the proposed partnership with Zwirner. Last week he blocked an attempt to formalize such an agreement, according to a report in the Guardian.

He told the paper that he is concerned that the foundation’s board is failing its imperative to safeguard af Klint’s work, of which it holds the majority at some 1,300 pieces, instead “selling it off.” He is also concerned that af Klint’s series might be split up by potential sales. “The paintings connect and to sell some within a series would interrupt that,” Erik said.

“The fact the work is kept together is so unique, almost none of the work is lost,” he continued. “As a family, we do not believe that the work is meant to be commercialized, which has happened these last few years, and what we’re trying to do is bring it back to order.”

Erik’s father Johan, former chair of the foundation, expressed similar fears. “It’s a plundering of the foundation,” he said. “It’s extraordinary and absurd.” The foundation’s statues do not outlaw the sale of af Klint’s work in order to pay for the preservation of the remaining holdings. The one exception is the “Paintings for the Temple” series because these were, according to the artist, authored at the bequest of a higher being. However, it was these 193 compositions that were instead offered as NFTs via Pharrell William’s Web3 platform in 2022.

The Hilma af Klint Foundation did not respond to a request for comment. Its offices are currently closed for the holidays.

Installation view, Hilma af Klint: Tree of Knowledge, David Zwirner, New York, November 4, 2021–January 29, 2022. Courtesy David Zwirner.

Zwirner has confirmed that, in the event of a collaboration with the foundation, “some work might be potentially for sale.” He added that the proceeds would be used to care for the works currently held by the foundation.

“The family members are operating against the best interests of Hilma af Klint,” he added. “This is a power struggle within the board—we have a standoff between the four board members and one board member who is trying to sabotage them.”

A spokesperson for David Zwirner said by email that the process of establishing a long-term partnership between the gallery and the foundation “is being conducted with great care and respect for the foundation’s statutes.”

They added that the partnership will result in a solo exhibition at the gallery next year and new research and publications “to further explore and celebrate af Klint’s groundbreaking contributions to modern art.” The first of these would be the English translation of Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky: Dreams of the Future, to be published by David Zwirner Books in 2025.

In 2021, Zwirner was involved in the sale of one of the few works by Hilma af Klint that did not to belong to her foundation. That fall, he exhibited at his New York gallery one of two versions of “The Tree of Knowledge,” a group of eight watercolors originally produced between 1913 and 1915. It had been given by the artist to the occultist Rudolf Steiner, who had greatly influenced her.

Zwirner only offered the series to institutional buyers and it was acquired by Glenstone Museum in Potomac, Maryland.

In the early 1900s, Hilma af Klint adopted an expressive style characterized by flat planes of color overlaid with complex geometric patterns. Although she has been described as an early abstract painter, her unusual compositions were guided by deeply held mystic beliefs, making her aims very different from those of peers like Kandinsky and Mondrian.