Auguste Herbin was a pioneer of Synthetic Cubism, a more colourful and simplified version of Analytic Cubism which Picasso and Braque had explored a few years earlier. He adopted the style after moving into the Bateau-Lavoir in 1909, the famed Parisian studios in which Picasso, Braque and Gris had also worked.

Prior to his exploration of Cubism, Herbin had embraced Fauvism, exhibiting with the group at the 1907 Salon d’automne. It is this this blending of Cubism with the vibrant colours of the ‘wild beasts’ that gives Herbin his unique style and important identity within the movement. Herbin’s Cubist period did not last long, with the artist returning to a simplified form of realism in the 1920s before he abandoned any form of figuration some years later.

In ‘Nature morte aux feuilles’ Herbin breaks the still life down into planes of vision, layering the scene through geometric shapes and abstracted elements. Understanding of space is distorted and perspective is flattened, as leaves sprout from arcs and a curtain hangs beside a geometric pattern. Each object is redacted to its purest form, in an indication of Herbin’s adoption of absolute geometric abstraction in the 1930s.

‘Nature morte aux feuilles’ was most recently part of an important exhibition of Herbin’s work at Musée de Montmartre in Paris (2024). This retrospective was one of the most in-depth studies into the artist in recent years.