Auguste Herbin Abstract Paintings

VENUS I by Auguste Herbin (1882-1960) Oil on canvas 100 x 81 cm (39 ³/₈ x 31 ⁷/₈ inches) Signed and dated lower left, herbin 1945 Provenance: Private collection, Stockholm Galerie d...

Auguste Herbin 1882-1960 French Aoum II Signed and dated 'herbin 1944' (lower right); titled "aoum" 2 (lower left) Oil on canvas This bold and vivid abstract oil on canvas was painted by French painter Auguste Herbin, a pioneer in popularizing Modernist abstraction. Over his expansive nearly 60-year career, Herbin rubbed shoulders with art history greats from Pablo Picasso to Georges Braque before honing his personal and innovative style. Entitled Aoum II, the painting stands apart for its daring color palette and crisp composition. Painted in 1944, Aoum II embodies Herbin’s fully-formed artistic aesthetic and stylistic tenets. Only two years prior to its creation, Herbin developed his “alphabet plastique,” a synergistic visual language of color and form that he described in detail in his published book L’art non-figuratif non-objectif. Though the artist was highly cerebral in his process of creating art, one does not need to perfectly understand his principles to feel Aoum II's magnetism. The geometric shapes visible in the composition — primarily fragmented triangles and circles — are rendered in bold pinks, blues and yellows on a deep black background. His tiered application of color creates a natural three-register visual effect as if to tell a story from the apex of the form to its denouement. Auguste Herbin began his artistic training at the École des Beaux-Arts de Lille before moving to Paris in 1901. In the early years of his career, he experimented with a variety of styles, exhibiting Post-Impressionistic works at the Salon des Indépendants in 1906 and Fauvist paintings at the Salon d'Automne in 1907. After a brief Cubist period following his introduction to Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Otto...