Auguste Herbin

Galerie Île de France, Paris
Galerie Bischofberger, Zurich
Private Collection

Zurich, City Galerie, Auguste Herbin, 1965, no. 15, illustrated in the catalogue

Geneviève Claisse, Herbin, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, Lausanne, 1993, no. 675, illustrated p. 398

Canvas is not lined. The upper right corner is gently buckled. A few minor scuffs and scratches are visible at the corners of the canvas as well as along the center of the top edge. There is a thin line of minor stable cracking in the white pigment left of center. Under UV light; no inpainting is apparent. Overall the work is in very good condition.
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Originally under the influence of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, Herbin gradually gave way to an involvement with Cubism starting in 1909 with a shift to the "bateau-lavoir studios," where he met contemporaries such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris. These artists enhanced his determination for newer ways of picturing matter, as contemporary artistic intentions and directions were changing. Similarly, as a continuation of Cezanne's call to treat nature as "the cylinder, the cone and the sphere," Herbin has broken the portrait down into a series of spirals, or volutes in the present work. 

Volutes, painted in 1930, is an exceptional example of Herbin's post-Cubism portraiture, depicting one or possibly two figures.  Unlike Braque and Picasso's early Cubist work, Herbin continuously used a full palette of color with deep reds, greens and blues. Herbin's late twenties are also noticeable by the appearance of black lines swaying round the geometrical forms being larger and placed into a more complex composition. The artist gradually immersed himself into pure geometric abstraction, and Volutes marks one of the last major oils to retain literal references.