2011 PART INVESTMENT INCOME

Oil on canvas; 12 13/16 x 16 in.

Born in Quievy, Nord, he studied drawing at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Lille, from 1898 to 1901, when he settled in Paris. The initial influence of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism visible in paintings that he sent to the Salon des Independants in 1906 gradually gave way to an involvement with Cubism after his move in 1909 to the Bateau-Lavoir studios, where he met Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris; he was also encouraged by his friendship with Wilhelm Uhde. His work was exhibited in the same room as that of Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes and Fernand Leger in the Salon des Independants of 1910, and in 1912 he participated in the influential Section d'Or exhibition.

After producing his first abstract paintings in 1917, Herbin came to the attention of Leonce Rosenberg who, after World War I, made him part of the group centered on his Galerie de l'Effort Moderne and exhibited his work there on several occasions in 1918 and 1921. Herbin's radical reliefs of simple geometric forms in painted wood, such as Colored Wood Relief (1921; Paris, Musee National d'Art Moderne), challenged not only the status of the easel painting but also traditional figure–ground relationships. The incomprehension that greeted these reliefs and related furniture designs, even from those critics most favorably disposed towards Cubism, was such that until 1926 or 1927 he followed Rosenberg's advice to return to a representational style. Herbin himself later disowned landscapes, still-lifes and genre scenes of this period, such as Bowls Players (1923; Paris, Musee National d'Art Moderne), in which the objects were depicted as schematized volumes.

After a students' party in Antwerp recently, this was left on the street outside the Art Academy. Was it waste? Or was it art? Was it an answer to Tracey Emin's 'Unmade Bed'? And was it valuable enough for the Saatchi brothers to invest in? We will never know. The council sent a truck to pick it up a couple of days later.

<< Arhiva >>