“The pictures were painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings, and with great force.” These are the words of the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, who died in 1944 with almost no recognition for her significant contribution to Western art. In 1906, she began painting her monumental works—revolutionary in their scale, vibrancy of color, and level of abstraction. Highly spiritual in nature, af Klint’s work finally achieved wide appreciation in 2019, when a landmark show at the Guggenheim Museum, in New York, exhibited her “secret paintings,” vast pastel canvases that had been hidden from the public for decades. In Bilbao, the Guggenheim presents a comprehensive exhibition that covers af Klint’s oeuvre from beginning to end—the early, more traditional works; the automatic drawings; the majestic series (“Paintings for the Temple,” the “Atom Series”); and the late watercolors. —Sabina Vitale