[3][4][5] Artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and Luigi Russolo chose Theosophy as the main ideological and philosophical basis of their work.

"[19][note 5] Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke pointed out that Annie Besant in collaboration with Leadbeater has also published an "influential book" titled Thought-Forms,[22] a record of clairvoyant investigation.

His wings fill the middle region representing the motion or pulsation of cosmic life, while within the octagon are displayed the various planes of consciousness, through which humanity must rise to attain a perfect Manhood.

Schmiechen, like most Western artists concerned to invest their images with qualities of transcendence, turned for inspiration to the foundational iconographical type of divine-human hypostasis, the Biblical Christ.

Indeed, he employed several standard devices: an undifferentiated background; over-large, staring eyes; a frontal composition designed to focus attention directly upon the subject's confronting gaze; a sense of sagacity heightened by indications of the sitter's self-possession; no distracting detail in vestment or jewellery; and a framing of the features by long hair and a beard.

[60][note 11] Af Klint considered abstract art to be the "spiritual precursor of a utopian social harmony, a world of tomorrow.

[86][note 16] According to Robert Welsh, the blue and yellow colors used in the work can be explained as astral "shells or radiations" of the figures.

"[89] In Isis Unveiled, Blavatsky wrote: Three spirits live and actuate man, teaches Paracelsus; three worlds pour their beams upon him; but all three only as the image and echo of one and the same all-constructing and uniting principle of production.

[3][102][note 21] In 1912, he wrote in his main theoretical work Über das Geistige in der Kunst on the importance of Theosophy "for his art".

[104][note 22] According to Boris Falikov, Theosophy helped Kandinsky conceptually to comprehend creative and spiritual experiences, which, as he understood, "more and more merged into a single whole."

The works by Blavatsky, Steiner, and their like-minded people helped him not only to conceptualize his experience, but also to formulate his own mission, which combined the artistic and religious dimension.

This fact is confirmed his "polemic against materialism, positivism and scepticism, the references to spiritism and psychical research as proofs of the approaching spiritual synthesis of science, religion and art.

"[111] Rose-Carol Washton Long wrote that Theosophy convinced Kandinsky that "hidden imagery could be a powerful method" of conveying the spiritual ideas.

[132][note 27] In Chelsea Jones' opinion, Kupka's painting The Dream (1909) confirms his "interest in Buddhism, Theosophy, and science and represents his belief in the immaterial.

Through the variation in scale between the dream figures and their earthly forms, Kupka clearly made the painting about an experience of invisible reality with the immaterial dominating the material.

[136][note 28]Max Beckmann (1884–1950)[140] was, like both Mondrian and Kandinsky, interested in the "Theosophical theory" of Blavatsky and also began to study the Vedas and Indian philosophy.

[141][note 29] In Vladimir Ivanov's opinion,[143] Beckmann's painting the Death (German: Der Tod) requires the Theosophical commentary, without which the meaning of the composition is impossible to understand.

Besant explained it as follows: "Kâmaloka, literally the place or habitat of desire, is... a part of the astral plane, not divided from it as a distinct locality, but separated off by the conditions of consciousness of the entities belonging to it.

She stated that "he sees his ambitions with their success or frustration... the predominant tendency of the whole comes clearly out, the ruling thought of the life asserts itself, and stamps itself deeply into the soul, marking the region in which the chief part of his post-mortem existence will be spent.

A series of sketches is devoted to the development of motives, which then found their finished expression in the work Early Men (German: Frühe Menschen).

[156] In Luciano Chessa's opinion, Theosophy is the "key" that makes it possible to "identify, decode, and contextualize" Russolo's interest in the occult, which is present in his compositions: from his "printmaking and paintings" to his theoretical works on music.

[158] His reading the Theosophical books by Besant and Leadbeater on sound-forms[22][159] "probably influenced one of his most icastic" paintings, Force Lines of Lightning (Italian: Linee-forza della folgore, 1912).

[160] The triangular picture of the shock wave in this painting is "extraordinarily close" to the depiction of the sound-forms of a thunderstorm, which described in Leadbeater's The Hidden Side of Things: "The majestic roll of a thunderstorm creates usually a vast flowing band of colour, while the deafening crash often calls into temporary existence an arrangement of irregular radiations... or sometimes a huge irregular sphere with spikes projecting from it in all directions.

"[161] Chessa wrote that Russolo's painting La musica represents, according to Leadbeater, "the hidden side of the performance of a piece of music.

"[163][note 32] This work, like Maschere, shows a series of flying masks with various expressions that can readily be interpreted as a "visualization or materialization of the different states of mind" of a pianist-medium, which performed by spirits he himself has summoned.

"[165][166] In Chessa's opinion, this painting is "structured according to criteria presented in Thought-Forms,[167] in particular the section of the book that describes the forms produced by music.

[190] On his illustration The Completed Eucharistic Form "the thought-form takes a mosque-like appearance with minarets rising from the church to envelop and influence the surrounding countryside.

[192] In 1937, painter Ethelwynne M. Quail has performed illustrations to the Theosophical book Kingdom of the Gods based upon Geoffrey Hodson's "researches, carried out between 1921 and 1929.

[197][note 38] Robsjohn-Gibbings' criticism was so "successful that, for decades, supporters of abstract art religiously avoided mentioning the esoteric connections of its pioneers."

If there is one thing you do not want your hardcore modernist to be, it is a member of an occult cult... Theosophy takes art into Dan Brown territory.