Includes post and packaging to UK and Europe
Open edition reproduction Giclée prints of original meditation drawings dated circa 1932, printed on Hahnemuhle German Etching 310gsm. 14 versions, variable sizes, price is for each individual print.
Please email hello@wildalchemylab.com when you have made your order to clarify which print you would like.
L-R
Eternal Energy (16.5 x 14.8)
Kether the Crown (16.5 x1 2.2)
The Way of the Cross (16.5x11.5)
The Portal of Initiation. (16.5x10.8)
Reincarnation (16.5 x 15.4 cm)
The Creation (16.5x11.6)
The Chalice in the Heart (16.5 x 9.9)
The Cosmic Incarnation. (16.5x11.8)
Om Mani Padme Hum (16.5 x 12.1)
The Divine Breath (16.5x12.5)
The Grail (16.5x10.7)
The Light of the Soul (16.5x12.4)
The Mystery of Life. (16.5x11.2)
The Central Spiritual Sun. (16.5 x 11.4)
All sizes in inches.
Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn(1881–1962)
Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn was born in London in 1881, to Dutch parents. Her father was an engineer, and her mother was active in movements advocating social reform and women’s emancipation. In her early twenties she moved to Zurich and studied at the School of Applied Arts and later art history at the University of Zurich. There she met Iwan Fröbe, a Croatian flutist and orchestral conductor, whom she later married. Following his sudden death in a plane crash in 1915, Fröbe-Kapteyn travelled with her father to the Monte Verità (“Mountain ofTruth”) in the Swiss village of Ascona, an anarchistic utopian community promoting nudism, a vegetarian diet and liberal world view that was radical for its time. This would be where she would remain for the rest of her days.
It was there that she established the research centre Eranos, a title suggested by the historian of religion Rudolf Otto. The Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung encouraged her to use Eranos as a meeting place for intellectual exchange between Eastern and Western traditions, with themed symposia designed to foster interdisciplinary dialogue. Fröbe-Kapteyn dedicated herself to collecting images and symbols that illuminated each theosophical theme explored at Eranos, including Yoga and Meditation in East and West (1933), The Gestalt and Cult of the Great Mother (1938), The Hermetic Principle in Mythology, Gnosis, and Alchemy (1942), TheMysteries (1944), Spirit and Nature (1946), and Man and Time (1951).
Her 1938 Eranos conference, The Great Mother, featured visual material depicting significant goddesses represented in sculptures from Aztec, Minoan, and Babylonian civilisations. Over time, Fröbe-Kapteyn assembled a collection of more than 6,000 images that illustrated Jung’s writings, forming the Archive for Research inArchetypal Symbolism (ARAS). This pursuit of an esoteric, sacred visual language inspired her own artistic practice. From this point forward her creative work developed along two interconnected paths: carefully executed works on paper and imagery drawn from her archival research.
Fröbe-Kapteyn’s prints were created between 1927 and 1934, following a series of highly precise experiments in geometric abstraction. Visually, these works appear to merge the dynamic energy of futurism with an enigmatic symbolic vocabulary. Her prints were strongly influenced by the English Theosophist Alice Bailey, whom she met during a visit to Long Island in the late 1920s. Bailey employed art within psychotherapeutic contexts, using it as a means of bringing subconscious imagery into visual form.
The prints feature diagrams composed of interlocking circles, functioning both as aids for meditation and portals to higher planes of consciousness, and as visual representations of the conceptual framework underlying Eranos. Their cryptic symbolic and mystical resonance is heightened by the use of gold leaf, intricate geometry and subtle figurative elements. Frequently guided by the proportions of the golden ratio, Fröbe-Kapteyn described these angular compositions as “meditation drawings.” Like Jung, she came to believe that such symbols could provide insight into the workings of the psyche.
A group of 14 of these drawings were selected to be translated into screenprints. The exact number of sets produced for her ‘Meditation Drawing Screenprints’ remains unknown and are considered rare. The originals of Eternal Energy, Kether the Crown, The Way of the Cross, The Grail, Om Mani Padme Hum and The Cosmic Incarnation are also available, price on application.