Auguste Herbin

Born in 1882 in Northern France into a family of textile workers, the young Herbin began studying at the Lille School of Fine Arts in 1899. In 1901, he moved to Paris. By 1906, a year after the scandal of the "cage aux fauves," he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants alongside Matisse and Derain. In 1909, he settled at the Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre, where he met Picasso, Braque, and Gris. Their work on the geometrization of forms greatly interested him. In his landscapes, various elements are cut into geometric shapes—cubes, rectangles, circles, triangles—combined with a colorful palette inspired by his travels in southern France. As early as 1910, he exhibited alongside Léger, Metzinger, and Gleizes. During the war, several trends in geometric abstraction emerged in Europe. In Russia: Suprematism with Malevich, Rayonism with Larionov and Gontcharova, or Constructivism with Rodchenko and Exter, as well as Mondrian and the developments of Neoplasticism. Herbin was profoundly influenced by these movements and gave his work an abstract and geometric direction.

In early 1918, Auguste Herbin was discovered by the art dealer Léonce Rosenberg, who exhibited his paintings at the Galerie de l’Effort moderne, where he held numerous solo exhibitions. His paintings then took a radical turn: he painted and constructed geometric shapes that did not aim to represent a real subject. The geometric form, coupled with color, became autonomous. In 1931, he founded the Abstraction-Création group with Georges Vantongerloo and Jean Hélion, aiming to defend abstract art against the Surrealist group. Later, in 1949, he wrote a book titled L’art non-figuratif non-objectif, in which he formulated his "Plastic Alphabet," establishing correspondences between geometric shapes, colors, letters, and music. He passed away in 1960 in Paris, leaving a major legacy for the next generation.