AUGUSTE HERBIN

Born in 1882 in Quiévy, died in 1960 in Paris.

Auguste Herbin is one of the rare artists who not only left their mark on the history of abstract art but also on 20th-century modernism. The son of weavers, Herbin began working at the age of 12. His dedication to municipal drawing classes earned him a scholarship that allowed him to enroll at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lille. However, at the end of the 1901 academic year, he decided to leave the Beaux-Arts and settle in Paris. Herbin continued his artistic explorations in the wake of Cézanne, whom he considered his mentor, as well as Van Gogh. His early 20th-century still-life compositions retain a texture reminiscent of Cézanne, but Herbin's technique is more dynamic, with strong contrasts and colors at their most intense.

It is fascinating to note that rounded forms, subdivided into geometric patterns, are already present in his figurative works. This intuitive sense of geometry, perceptible as early as 1901, would leave a lasting mark on Herbin's work, as he constantly sought a geometric ideal to structure his forms and colors. In 1909, Herbin took up residence at the Bateau-Lavoir, occupying a studio adjacent to Pablo Picasso's. However, his approach to Cubism differed from that of Braque and Picasso. Initially, Herbin rejected the axiom of achromaticism, vigorously preserving vivid and contrasting colors in his work. Moreover, his graphic style employed entirely abstract geometric forms, which served no figurative purpose. Between 1918 and 1920, the majority of Herbin's creations flirted with abstraction. However, Herbin never forgot the teachings of Fauvism. In his work, color acted spontaneously, dissolving form. Thus, after having been influenced by Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism, he arrived at abstraction in the 1920s, a period from which he began to theorize his own artistic vocabulary. In 1920 and 1921, the artist first explored the complexities of mural painting. He created frescoes and attempted to integrate painted works and sculptures into architecture, the pivot and fusion of the arts. He also created sculptures in painted wood as well as 'sculpta-paintings,' a type of three-dimensional painting.

Around 1928, the aesthetic based on geometric, rectangular, and rectilinear forms was gradually replaced by a more organic and asymmetrical style. Industrial motifs gave way to those inspired by nature. Between 1930 and 1933, twisted, coiled, and undulating patterns began to appear. Herbin's stylistic line is a continuous flow without beginning or end. It is fluid and flexible like wool. This undulating and coiled line evokes the frenetic movement of a dancing maenad. In 1938, Auguste Herbin anticipated the notion of cosmic art. His circular forms evoke celestial bodies traveling on a circular trajectory. Celestial bodies moving around their orbits suddenly collide and shatter into a thousand pieces. The painter, like a demiurge, escapes the constraints of terrestrial gravity. His field of expression becomes cosmic space.

His abstract language gradually became more refined, revolving around his theory based on a correspondence between forms and colors. His research in this area culminated in his "Plastic Alphabet," created in 1943 and published as a treatise in 1949 in his book "Non-Figurative Non-Objective Art." His technique consisted of arbitrarily associating geometric shapes, colors, and tones with each letter. Acting like actual letters of an alphabet, these plastic elements were linked to one another around various concepts: a name, a musical note, a day of the week, or a philosophical concept. In this way, Herbin continued to develop the idea introduced by Goethe and popularized by Rudolf Steiner, which posits the existence of esoteric correspondences between letters, sounds, forms, and colors. It is the artist's responsibility to make the mysteries of the cosmic order perceptible to our senses. The exploitation of pure geometric forms, such as the square, the triangle, the circle, the semicircle, as well as the use of primary colors, offers the painter an infinite field of experimentation and creation through his intuition.

Co-founder of the Abstraction-Création association in 1931 with Georges Vantongerloo, Auguste Herbin remained a key figure in the post-war abstract art scene and a true mentor to other artists, including Victor Vasarely, Georges Folmer, Aurélie Nemours, Jean Dewasne, Geneviève Claisse, Olle Baertling, and Jean Leppien. Imbued with a synesthetic spirituality, Auguste Herbin's art is based on purely abstract thought, where each form and color is a silent statement. And that is what makes it so beautiful.