Art and the Theosophical Movement

UNDER CONSTRUCTION
UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Artists influenced by Theosophy

Theosophical Society Founders Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and William Quan Judge were quite skilled in drawing. The arts have always been appreciated by Theosophists as a means of expression spirituality.

• Hilma af Klint was a Swedish artist and mystic who painted some of the earliest abstract art.
• A. Theodore Bondy was an American Theosophist known internationally as a calligrapher and illustrator.
• Claude Fayette Bragdon was a Theosophist from Rochester, New York who is known for his architecture, stage sets, and writings.
• Maurice Braun was a Hungarian-American artist of the Point Loma community, noted for his landscapes of California.
• Burton Callicott was an art professor from Memphis, Tennessee who incorporated Theosophical concepts into his paintings and drawings.
• Jean Delville was a Belgian symbolist painter, author, and teacher; he was the first General Secretary of the Theosophical Society in Belgium.
• Harold E. Forgostein was and American artist and teacher, and Guardian-in-Chief of the Temple of the People.
• Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn was a Dutch artist and Theosophist. She is best known as the founder of the Eranos Foundation that holds annual conferences of scholars.
• Lawren Stewart Harris was a Canadian painter in the Group of Seven who pioneered a distinctly Canadian painting style in the early twentieth century. He was a member of the Toronto Lodge.
• Monsieur Harrisse was a French amateur artist who drew the first portrait of Master Morya in black and white crayons at The "Lamasery" in New York.
• Z. Vanessa Helder was an American artist from the Pacific Northwest who came from a family of Theosophists.
• Johannes Itten was a Swiss expressionist painter, designer, teacher, writer and theorist associated with the Bauhaus school.
• Wassily Kandinskywas a Russian abstract expressionist painter who was heavily influenced by Theosophy. He wrote a hugely influential book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, and taught at the Bauhaus.
• Paul Klee was a Swiss-German artist influenced by Theosophy and by the art movements of Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism.
• J. Augustus Knapp was an American Theosophist and artist best known for his superb illustrations of Manly P. Hall's masterwork The Secret Teachings of All Ages and many works of science fiction and fantasy.
• Don Kruse is an art professor at Indiana University at Fort Wayne. His paintings draw on mythological images, popular art such as comic strips, and the works of master artists, and he is a life member of the Theosophical Society in America.
• Thomas Le Clear was a prominent American painter who was part of the circle of friends of Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott in New York City.

Other Theosophists who were skilled artists include Mary Gebhard; William Loftus Hare, an engraver; Harold Edward Hare, a painter; ...

Art works significant to Theosophists

• The Path
• Gutzom Borglum portrait of H. P. Blavatsky.
• Murals at Olcott by Richard Blossom Farley.

See also

• Artists

Additional resources

Articles

• “Effective Art”: Imaginal Worlds, Fohat, and Freedom by Jeff Durham
• Beauty Is Not Optional by Kathryn Gann
• Theosophy and the Emergence of Modern Abstract Art by Kathleen Hall
• British Pre-Raphaelites and the Question of Reincarnation by Lynda Harris
• Jean Delville: Painting, Spirituality, and the Esoteric by Lynda Harris
• Concerto for Magic and Mysticism: Esotericism and Western Music by Gary Lachman
• The Symbolic Art of Charles Rennie MacKintosh by Alan Senior

Bibliographies

• Bibliography on Arts and Music from the Henry S. Olcott Memorial Library.