Help Us Decode the Herbin Painting!

Are you fluent in abstractions?

Feb 20, 2017

BY ANTIQUES ROADSHOW

Appraisal: 1950 Auguste Herbin Abstract Gouache

Transcript

GUEST: This piece I actually picked up at an estate sale in Phoenix. I just loved the geometric pattern it had. I loved the midcentury modern kind of feel it has, and so I bought it.

APPRAISER: So how long ago did you purchase the work?

GUEST: I actually bought it about three years ago.

APPRAISER: Okay, well, the artist's name is Auguste Herbin. He's French. It's also dated 1950. He was born near the Belgian border in 1882. He studied art, and then he moved to Paris, as most artists seemed to do. And his studio was right next to that of Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris. So by 1913, he was so influenced by them that he was painting cubist works. Then he got drafted for World War I, and he was actually too short to serve in the military, so they utilized his talents in other ways. He was asked to decorate a military chapel and also to design camouflage for the Air Force.

GUEST: Oh, wow.

APPRAISER: So after the war, he continued to experiment with different styles of painting, including abstract and representational styles. And around 1938, he became very interested in the Italian Trecento, and his forms became geometric and very simplified. And then around 1942, he designed something called a plastic alphabet. And he used different geometric symbols to stand for letters of the alphabet, and sometimes it would be the same shape but in different colors that would have different meanings. So some of his works of art, you can actually decode them, and it will spell out a word or it will have something that you can sing.

(chuckling)

APPRAISER: So I made a slight attempt but I didn't come up with much. So I don't know if that is what's going on here.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: The medium here is gouache, which is a water-based paint. Unlike watercolor, it's opaque. And you said you paid how much for this?

GUEST: $200.

APPRAISER: $200. So I think if this were to be sold in a retail gallery, it might sell for something like $30,000 or $35,000.

GUEST: Oh, that's wonderful. Wow! That's so cool.

At the 2016 Palm Springs ANTIQUES ROADSHOW event, a guest brought in a painting by the French artist Auguste Herbin from 1950 featuring geometric shapes and bold colors. Paintings expert Nan Chisholm gave the gouache painting a retail value of $30,000 to $35,000, an incredible return on investment for the owner who had originally purchased the piece for $200.

Herbin was influenced by the Cubism and abstractions of his peers Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris. After serving in World War I designing camouflage for the Air Force, Herbin continued to experiment with painting styles, becoming inspired by the Italian Trecento and diving into geometric and distilled forms.

Herbin developed a lexicon for his paintings, cultivating an alphabet of symbols he dubbed l'Alphabet Plastique to convey messages. Chisholm explained that he "used different geometric symbols to stand for letters of the alphabet, and sometimes it would be the same shape but in different colors that would have different meanings." Some of his works of art can be decoded, spelling out a word or something one can sing. Chisholm isn't sure if this particular painting uses Herbin's alphabet, so we wanted to ask you: