Robert Combas Biography
ROBERT COMBAS (1957) Robert Combas is a French painter and sculptor, born on 25 May 1957 in Lyon, France, and now lives and works in Paris. He is widely recognized as a progenitor of the figurative libre movement that began in Paris around 1980 as a reaction to the art establishment in general and to minimalism and conceptual art in particular. Figuration libre is often thought to have roots in Fauvism and Expressionism and is linked to contemporary movements such as Bad Painting and Neo-Expressionism. It draws on pop cultural influences such as graffiti, cartoons and rock music in an attempt to produce a more varied, direct and honest reflection of contemporary society, often satirising or criticizing its excesses. Combas' work has always been strongly rooted in depictions of the human figure. The figures are often in wild, violent or orgiastic environments. Usually on large, often unstretched canvases, Combas crowds his flat pictorial space with a proliferation of bodies, street poems, and drawings that recall the compulsive patterns of much popular and foreign art. He creates fast-paced tales of war, crime, sex, celebration and transgression - in short, every phase that makes up the constant flow of modern life. In recent years a strong autobiographical effort has been evident in his work, which was present only subliminally, if at all, in previous works.
