If the Musée Matisse owes its establishment to the painter from whom it takes its name, it was thanks to an exceptional donation made by Herbin in 1957 that the Musée d’art moderne de Céret houses the paintings executed by the latter during his two main stays in Céret: the first in 1913 and later in 1919/20. These are amongst the masterpieces of the collection.

The inventor of a visual alphabet developed in the 1940s, Herbin was in search of a universal art. His research focused on the relationship between colour, painted in solid blocks without modulation or depth, and the refined, geometric form, devoid of lyricism or anecdote. His alphabet associates letters, shapes, colours and musical sounds.

As a painter and theoretician, Herbin had a very important influence on the painters of the post-war period. Amongst the founders of Abstraction in France, he became, after the First World War, one of the leading protagonists of the two great movements that were Abstraction-Creation and New Realism (Réalités Nouvelles).