robert humblot
1907‑1962
Founder in 1935 of the artistic movement “Forces Nouvelles”

The new rehang at the Musée d’Art moderne de Paris in 2022 brought renewed attention to the work of Robert Humblot, co-founder — with the critic Henri Hérault and the painters Henri Jannot, Jean Lasne, Alfred Pellan, Georges Rohner and Pierre Tal Coat — of the “Forces Nouvelles” movement.

Their first exhibition took place in April 1935 at Galerie Billiet – Pierre Vorms, rue La Boétie, Paris 8^th. The group achieved full recognition in 1980, when the Musée d’Art moderne devoted a retrospective to them.

The formation of the “Forces Nouvelles” group coincided with the rediscovery of seventeenth‑century painters of reality during the 1934 exhibition at the Musée de l’Orangerie. Robert Humblot, who asserted the urgent necessity of a return to drawing and to the conscientious craft of tradition, was deeply impressed. The painting of the Le Nain brothers, of Baugin, and of the Caravaggesque Valentin, Tournier, Philippe de Champaigne, and Georges de La Tour exerted a lasting influence.