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FROM AN IMPORTANT BELGIAN COLLECTION AUGUSTE HERBIN (1882-1960) Having worked through post-impressionist and fauve phases while in his early twenties, Auguste Herbin painted his first cubist pictures in 1909, closely following Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Even at this time, he displayed a strong predilection for geometry in his compositions, and he was drawn to the Section d'Or group around the Duchamp brothers, who mingled their Cubism with extra-pictorial elements drawn from philosophy and mathematics. They called themselves the Section d'Or, a name derived from the theoretical works of Pythagoras and Leonardo da Vinci concerning the ideal proportions of the human body. Herbin participated in their second and final group show at the Galerie La Boétie in October 1912, which marked the climax of Cubism as a collective endeavor. Herbin's synthetic cubist phase emphasized flattened geometric forms married to pure, unmodeled colour, and his work after the end of the war in 1918 represented a further distillation of purely formal elements, in which he eventually discarded conventional subject matters. After working in a neo-classical figurative style from 1922 to 1926, he again turned completely abstract, creating baroque curvilinear compositions that, while flat, imply a multi-layered spatial dimension. Together with Georges Vantongerloo, Jean Arp, Albert Gleizes, Jean Hélion and Franz Kupka, Herbin helped found the Abstraction-Crétion group in 1931. By 1940, influenced by the esoteric philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, the colour theories of Wolfgang von Goethe and the medieval art of alchemy, Herbin had formulated his own synthesis of philosophy, music, language, colour and form, which he codified in his Alphabet plastique. His intent was to "escape from the object and to find again the word and creative action" (quoted in D. René, Herbin the Plastic Alphabet, exh. cat., Galerie Denise Ren, New York 1973). He used this system to create entirely flat geometrical compositions that, when compared to the abstractions of the 1930s, are classically balanced, in many instances almost serene, and evoke a transcendent spiritual state. Destruction--creative, negative--positive; the alphabet has the attributes of any great discovery. Through it, Herbin was able to achieve the purest abstraction, to become the master and founder of abstraction in France, a creator of an exceptional originality and richness.

Auguste Herbin (1882-1960)

Oiseau

Details

Auguste Herbin (1882-1960)
Oiseau
signed and dated 'Herbin 1946' (lower right) and titled 'oiseau' (lower left)
oil on canvas
98.5 x 72 cm.
Painted in 1946

Provenance

Bought by the family of the present owners in 1967.

Special Notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

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Lot Essay

Geneviève Claisse has confirmed the authenticity of this work.

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