Auguste Herbin was a contemporary of Picasso and a very talented painter, but sadly, unlike the latter, hardly anybody has heard of him nowadays. The Montmartre Museum does a good job of turning the spotlight on him in their latest exhibition. Auguste Herbin was born in a small town near Cateau-Cambrésis in the North of France. He studied art at the Lille Fine Arts school, under an academic painter with the impressive name of Pharaon de Winter. Autoportrait (Self portrait) 1906 Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo Starting with a refined pointillist style Herbin explored the different twentieth century movements: fauvism, cubism and the 'return to order' after World War 1. His last style was geometric abstraction, being one of the leaders of the "Abstract-Creation" group in 1930s Paris. Toits de Paris sous la neige (Paris roofs under snow) 1902 Private Collection During the 1st world war, Herbin, who was too short to serve as a soldier, worked in an aeroplane manufactu...