The bold and colourful paintings of pioneering Swedish abstract artist Hilma af Klint will be displayed in an acclaimed exhibition coming to the Art Gallery of NSW.

Hilma af Klint: The Secret Paintings, was a “must see event” coming to the gallery in June, Tourism Minister Stuart Ayres said on Thursday.

The exhibition broke attendance records when it was featured at New York City’s Guggenheim Museum in 2018-19.

Arts Minister Don Harwin said it was “a major coup for Sydney”.

When Klint began creating her radically abstract paintings in 1906, she rarely exhibited them, convinced the world wasn’t ready to see them.

Art Gallery of NSW director Michael Brand said the exhibition was the first major survey in the Asia-Pacific region of the trailblazing artist.

“Stored away and scarcely known for decades, the startling rediscovery of af Klint’s ‘secret paintings’ has captured the imagination of contemporary audiences and at last placed the artist in the canon of truly imaginative and innovative twentieth century artists,” he said.

The exhibition will run from June 12 to September 19.