Auguste Herbin (Quiévy, 1882 – París, 1960). Cubist Composition / Bridge. Ca. 1922-1925. 18.5 x 24 cm. Pencil and colored pencils on paper, double-sided drawing. PROVENANCE: - Pierre Bergé et Associés, Paris. Signed "Herbin" in the lower right corner of the reverse drawing. On the front, a stamp from the Jack Kouropatva collection (Paris). CONDITION: Good condition. DESCRIPTION: Jack Kouropatva, a Polish native living in Paris, was one of the leading collectors of Auguste Herbin's work. His extensive collection of the artist's works, acquired directly from him, went on sale at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris during the 1990s (June 1992 and June 1993). This work presents two seemingly formally opposed images, one on each side of a sheet of paper, which nevertheless reveal two moments of the same creative process: the experimentation and reflection on form and motif that drove Auguste Herbin's work throughout his career. The obverse features an expression of the artist's personal Cubism, which explores the relationship between geometric forms and the path toward abstraction. In the center of the image is a female figure in profile, composed of separate geometric shapes. Behind it, a tall piece of furniture and a painting can be seen, and on either side appear a chair and a door topped by a semicircular arch. This is still a representation of a motif, and therefore a figurative work, but it already reveals the free conception of geometric form that would constitute one of the main foundations of Herbin's mature style, which he developed from 1945 onwards. On the obverse, however, appears a study from life of an openly figurative nature, depicting an urban bridge built on a rocky outcrop. This is a study for a painting now in a private collection (fig. 1), which falls within a very specific period in Herbin's work: his participation in the European New Objectivity movement between 1922 and 1925/26. These are probably two works produced during the same period. The Cubist composition on the obverse falls at the height of Herbin's experimentation with Cubism, following the denser compositions of the late 1910s and preceding the purely abstract works of the late 1920s, which also featured undulating forms that interacted with classical geometry. It was precisely during this period, during the first half of the 1920s, that Herbin's drastic abstract experimentation intersected with an almost forced return to figuration, determined by the commercial failure of his most radical works. This would take shape in works such as "Landscape," for which he produced a naturalistic study of the reverse. PARALLELS: Fig. 1 Photograph of the painting “Landscape”, by Auguste Herbin. Collection of the art dealer Léonce Rosenberg. Médiathèque du patrimoine et de la photographie, Charenton-le-Pont, inv. AP14N00757.