Robert Combas

ROBERT COMBAS (Lyon, 1957).
Untitled, 1992, from the Suite Olympic Centennial.
Lithograph on 270 grams Vélin d'Arches paper, copy 171/250.
Signed, dated and numbered in pencil.
Measurements: 90 x 63 cm.
French painter and sculptor, Robert Combas was trained at the School of Fine Arts in the city of Sete, in southeastern France, and held his first solo exhibition in 1980. He is considered the co-founding father of free figuration, a movement that began in Paris in 1980 as a reaction to the minimalism and conceptual art that were becoming established in the French capital at the time. Free figuration, "a painting that does not deny its primitive instincts or its desire for culture" according to Combas himself, has its roots in Fauvism and expressionism and establishes a connecting thread with the neo-expressionist movement and graffiti art. Therefore, Combas' works become a critique of society in general, through an intense style, based on the use of powerful, vivid and passionate colors that leave no inch of the canvas free, outlining in black the figures he depicts.
The Olympic Suite is composed of 50 lithographs and serigraphs chosen to represent various contemporary artistic trends. It was published to commemorate the first centenary of modern Olympism. The chosen artists are defined by diverse movements and pictorial currents, from the conceptualism and minimalism of "Ben" Vautier, the lyrical abstraction of Yasse Tabuchi, the painting of Oleg Tselkov who concentrates on the human figure, intensely expressive and treated with forceful forms and intense colors that seek to reflect the conflicts and violence of his time, and finally the work of André Arabis, clearly abstract and geometric.