Auguste Herbin was of short stature. During the First World War, this meant he was exempt from military service and assigned to an aeroplane factory near Paris.

Auguste Herbin was a French artist who moved through Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism before arriving at a geometric abstraction that bordered on language. He co-founded Abstraction-Creation, an international group promoting non-figurative art, and later helped establish the Salon des Realites Nouvelles. Herbin was also politically active, writing against fascism and joining the Communist Association of Revolutionary Writers and Artists.

Herbin's art style evolved throughout his career, beginning with Impressionism and Post-Impressionism before transitioning to Fauvism. He then explored Cubism, followed by pure abstraction. His later work was a systematic geometric abstraction that bordered on language.

Herbin is most recognised for developing the "alphabet plastique" in 1942, a systematic language of geometric forms and colours. He mapped letters and musical sounds onto triangles, circles, and rectangles, creating compositions that could theoretically be read as well as seen. This system drew on Goethe's Theory of Colours and Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy.