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Lot Essay
This work will be included in the forthcoming volume of the Auguste Herbin catalogue raisonné being prepared by Geneviève Claisse.
Executed in 1918, Composition belongs to a very specific moment in the career of Auguste Herbin, when his works moved from a cubist style towards a more abstract language. Herbin had started to experiment with Cubism in 1909, when he moved to the Bateau-Lavoir, sharing a studio with Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris. Mobilised during the First World War, the artist was forced to quit painting between 1914 and 1916, only resuming his artistic work in 1917. Dividing the canvas into interlocking sections of different colours and patterns, with Composition, Herbin created a surface of seemingly superimposed planes. Eschewing any form of representation, Composition creates a visual space that is determined by the relation of geometry and colours.
Herbin’s burgeoning abstract style, exemplified by Composition, attracted the attention of the art dealer Léonce Rosenberg, who invited Herbin to exhibit at his Galerie de l’Effort Moderne, where the present work was displayed in 1918. In the Bulletin, Rosenberg reserved the most praising words for Herbin: ‘the perfection of all perfections, the absolute of all idealism is always Herbin’ (quoted in Ibid., p. 21).
Executed in 1918, Composition belongs to a very specific moment in the career of Auguste Herbin, when his works moved from a cubist style towards a more abstract language. Herbin had started to experiment with Cubism in 1909, when he moved to the Bateau-Lavoir, sharing a studio with Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris. Mobilised during the First World War, the artist was forced to quit painting between 1914 and 1916, only resuming his artistic work in 1917. Dividing the canvas into interlocking sections of different colours and patterns, with Composition, Herbin created a surface of seemingly superimposed planes. Eschewing any form of representation, Composition creates a visual space that is determined by the relation of geometry and colours.
Herbin’s burgeoning abstract style, exemplified by Composition, attracted the attention of the art dealer Léonce Rosenberg, who invited Herbin to exhibit at his Galerie de l’Effort Moderne, where the present work was displayed in 1918. In the Bulletin, Rosenberg reserved the most praising words for Herbin: ‘the perfection of all perfections, the absolute of all idealism is always Herbin’ (quoted in Ibid., p. 21).