Auguste Herbin

(French, 1882–1960)

Auguste Herbin was a French painter who was a contemporary of and studiomate to the famed founders of Cubism: Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris. Differentiating himself from his peers, Herbin’s work was most often aligned with geometric abstraction, though his earlier paintings were notably influenced by the aesthetics and ideas of New Objectivity and Surrealism. His practice culminated in his later, best-known abstractions which consist of flat, colorful compositions of triangles, circles, and rectangles that he described as his “alphabet plastique.” Between the 1930s and 1940s, Herbin participated in several important artist groups and publications associated with non-figurative abstraction, including the Abstraction-Création group, the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, and the journal nonfigurativ. Born in Quiévy, France on April 29, 1882, he died in Paris, France on January 30, 1960, and his works are held in influential institutions throughout Europe and North America, including the Museum de Fundatie in The Netherlands and the National Galleries of Scotland.