We had almost given up hope, but it's finally here! The Auguste Herbin exhibition in a Parisian museum is finally open! The Musée de Montmartre is presenting a retrospective, the first in Paris, of his work until September 15, 2024. In fact, to complement this retrospective, and in parallel with an exhibition we are dedicating to him at the gallery, we will be showcasing a selection of the artist's work from different periods at our booth.

Céline Berchiche, art historian and co-curator with Mario Choueiry of the retrospective at the Musée de Montmartre, kindly wrote us a text on the presentation we are doing at the gallery. Here is an excerpt: “Herbin’s journey in the history of art is that of an artist from the end of the 19th century who, starting from the work of Cézanne and, with the palette of Van Gogh as his first beacon, became in the second half of the 20th century a beacon for many artists of all nationalities, as Paris from 1945 to 1955 was the great capital of international abstract art.

After 1945, his work at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, the support of critics and gallery owners, and his pedagogical talents contributed to a greater understanding of his magnum opus: the plastic alphabet. Auguste Herbin is the artist who allowed geometric abstract art to renew itself and transcend constructivist and neo-plastic syntheses. This dazzling abstract conclusion, as Victor Vasarely described it, should not obscure the fact that for each of the movements he participated in and of which he was a contemporary, particularly Fauvism and Cubism, he left behind a masterful body of work that immediately placed him among the greatest

In another part of the booth, we will revisit the work of Alberto Magnelli, the Florentine painter who lived for many years in France. We previously dedicated an exhibition to him, presenting a dialogue with the work of contemporary artist Karina Bisch. We will also be showcasing several of the artist's works from different periods, including a figurative piece from the 1920s. This exhibition, commissioned at the gallery in late 2023 by art historian and curator Domitille d'Orgeval, who wrote about Magnelli's work: "Magnelli's painting executed in 1924, depicting two bathers, illustrates, through their melancholic elegance, the painter's temporary shift towards a 'return to order.' This painting serves as a reminder that he was also a very accomplished figurative artist and that the practice of two seemingly antagonistic modes of expression was not necessarily incompatible." Moreover, the Italian painter, at the end of his life, wrote that abstraction "bears the traces of signs that come from very far away.".