Auguste Herbin (born 29 April 1882 in Quiévy; died 31 January 1960 in Paris) was a French painter. Auguste Herbin , the son of a workman, was born in 1882 in Quiévy, a small village near the French-Belgian border. From 1899 until 1901 Herbin lived in Lille where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1901 Herbin moved to Paris, where he lived for an extended time. He devoted himself first to Impressionism, later he joined the Fauves. In 1901 he also visited Brouge on several occasions and established various connections with artists there.
In 1931 Herbin was, together with Georges Vantongerloo and other artists, one of the founders of the Abstraction-Création in Paris. He was also after World War II one of the founders of the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, becoming its president in 1955.
In Paris Herbins studio was in the immediate vicinity of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, with the result that his works between 1910 and 1913 were inspired by Cubism. After 1926 Herbins paintings are distinguished by the use of elementary basic forms, such as triangles, circles, segments of circles, rectangles or trapezoids in pure colours. From here on his paintings are exclusively abstractions.
Starting in 1946 Herbin developed a system of composition called alphabet plast which is based on a structure of letters. In 1949 he published his own theory of colour (tying in with Goethes theory of colour) in his treatise L’art non-figuratif non-objectif.
In 1953 Herbin became paralyzed on his right side. He had to switch physical activities and especially painting to his left hand.
August Herbin participated in the first Documenta in 1955 and Documenta II in 1959 in Kassel. His works could also be seen posthumously at the Documenta V in 1971. Furthermore, his works have been exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and in the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Düsseldorf in 1987 at the all-embracing exhibition Positionen unabhängiger Kunst in Europa um 1937 (positions of independent art around 1937).
Auguste Herbin died unexpectedly on 31 January 1960 in Paris. He left behind an unfinished painting which he himself had still given the name Fin (end).