ROBERT COMBAS (Lyon, 1957).
Untitled, 1992.
Lithograph on 270 grams Vélin d'Arches paper, copy 119/250.
Signed, dated and numbered in pencil.
Measurements: 90 x 63 cm.
French painter and sculptor, Robert Combas trained at the school of Fine Arts in the city of Sete, in the southeast of France, and held his first personal 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. Combas's works therefore become a critique of society in general, through an intense style based on the use of powerful, vivid and passionate colours that leave no centimetre of the canvas free, outlining the figures he depicts in black.