Ymelda Hamann-Mentelberg
"Ymelda's spiritual experience of flowers and their Sacred Messages is the touchtone of her clairvoyance".
-Rudolf Steiner
Born at Potsdam in 1891, Ymelda Hamann-Mentelberg's lifelong artistic pursuits included voice training, dance, watercolor painting, and eurythmy--an art of movement visualizing sound and speech. At the height of a dance career that included performances on leading European stages she was celebrated as the Priestess of Eternity and the Seeress of the Unknown.
Rudolf Steiner, founder of eurythmy, met Ymelda after her performance at the Royal University of Music. Recognizing her talent as the highest and greatest the field of dance has to offer, he invited Ymelda to study eurythmy as his guest. A scientific seer and social philosopher, Steiner also founded the worldwide Waldorf school movement, Biodynamic agriculture, and Anthroposophy--the awareness of one's humanity.At the age of twenty-three Ymelda chose Anthroposophy as her personal path of inner development. Her anthroposophical and artisitic pursuits achieved a new synthesis and inner significance through eurythmy training. In time Ymelda became a personal pupil of Rudolf Steiner.
With the rise of National Socialism, Gestapo raids ordered the Waldorf Schools to close. Eurythmy and the anthroposophical movement were forced underground. At the outset of the ensuing war Ymelda found refuge in a historic stone farmhouse near the Starnberger Lake. It was here, in the beauty of Nature, that Ymelda’s lifelong facility with the arts, Goethe’s color theory, and Anthroposophy culminated in spirit-vision. Ymelda's experience of elemental, angelic, and hierarchical beings--as revealed through the world of flowers--is the touchstone of her clairvoyance.
Ymelda Hammann-Mentelberg's remarkable watercolors offer a treasure trove of living art. These paintings reveal the sacred inspirational beauty of a hitherto hidden realm of Nature. Each illustration published in The Sacred Messages of Flowers includes a corresponding poem and/or narrative. Ymelda offers the accompanying text not as fantasy, but as a fruit of her clairvoyant experiences, that is, her conversations with the flowers. This unique combination of watercolor, poetry, and spirit-dialogue provides an unprecedented glimpse into the enchanted world of flowers as a mirror of the cosmos.
-David Lenker