Auguste Herbin (1882–1960), “Nature Morte au Melon”, oil on canvas, c.1930

Still life with a melon and red cabbage before a window, oil on canvas by Auguste Herbin (1882–1960), signed lower right and painted circa 1930. Recorded in the catalogue raisonné compiled by Geneviève Claisse as no. 727, and accompanied by her Certificate of Authenticity. Herbin was among the pioneers of geometric abstraction in France. Born in Quiévy in the Nord, he moved to Paris in 1901 and by 1909 had a studio in the Bateau-Lavoir alongside Picasso and Braque, exhibiting with the cubists at the Salon des Indépendants and with the Section d'Or group. He was taken up by the dealer Léonce Rosenberg's Galerie de l'Effort Moderne, and by 1917 was producing fully abstract work — years ahead of most of his contemporaries. In the 1920s he returned for a time to the figure and the still life, bringing an abstractionist's discipline to everyday subjects: the present painting belongs to this figurative interlude. In 1931 he co-founded Abstraction-Création, the Paris association that became the rallying point for non-figurative art in Europe, and his later “alphabet plastique” — a codified language of colour and geometric form — made him a touchstone for post-war geometric and kinetic artists. His work is held by the Centre Pompidou, the Musée Matisse in Le Cateau-Cambrésis (which houses a major Herbin collection), and museums internationally. Paintings from Herbin's figurative years are the rarer face of his output, prized for carrying the structure and colour logic of his abstraction into recognisable subjects. Presented in a painted silvered rope-twist frame.