Auguste Herbin

Auguste Herbin
b. 1882, Quiévy, France
d. 1960, Paris, France

Born in a working-class town in Northern France, Herbin attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Lille before moving to Paris in his twenties. His studio was adjacent to Braque's and Picasso's, which allowed Herbin to witness the progression of early Cubism. In 1913 Herbin himself produced his first Cubist paintings. By 1917 Herbin's works became increasingly more Constructivist, favoring the careful arrangement of geometric forms over a multi-faceted representation of the external world, and in 1932 he became one of the founding members of the Abstraction-Création Movement. In 1953, after suffering paralysis in his right hand, Herbin taught himself to paint with his left. This impediment did not stop him from becoming widely successful - he participated in Documenta in 1955 and 1972, and exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1979. His works can be found in public collections worldwide, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Gallery, London; the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia.