ROBERT COMBAS | CAPE TOWN ART FAIR 2017 | BOOTH D5

ROBERT COMBAS

TÊTE À PLEIN DE SIGNES ET PYRAMIDALE AU COU BIEN-SÛR 2016, mixed media on paper, 50 x 64,5 cm CHEVEUX DES JAMAÎQUES Cheveux des Jamaïques, des frisés bourrés, bourrés, bourrés sont les chamailleries d’un âne rayé d’Afrique du SOAP. 2016, mixed media on paper, 50 x 64,5 cm

ROBERT COMBAS

A SOLO EXHIBITION OF INTERNATIONALLY KNOWN FRENCH PAINTER ROBERT COMBAS AT CAPE TOWN ART FAIR 2017 Robert Combas is a hotheaded, addicted to life, death, sex and cosmos. Born in France in 1957, he is one of the most famous painters of his generation. His art is the image of his magical genius and catalyzes his passion and intelligence. And the audience did not mistake it. He founded the “Free Figuration” movement at the beginning of the eighties: a come back to figuration drawing on a wide cultural and expressive panel and a rupture with the austere aesthetics of minimalism and arte povera.

Since then, “Free Figuration” has entered the pantheon of art history. It praises western and non-western art, raw art, fine arts and applied arts alike without distinction.

Robert Combas is a painter of life. His painting is gestural, like a dance that gets the artist into a trance and turns him into a shaman! He invokes the primitiveness of men, painting and the painter. He covers his canvases, drawings and sculptures with raw colors. No blending or half tones: impact requires an essential relationship to the world. Drawing comes afterward and gives shape and coherence to the surface of the paper or the canvas.

Everything clashes in Robert Combas’s work. His genius reaches its peak in his Crucifix series representing the ultimate passion…of the painter! The crosses are no less than used paintbrushes, and paint tubes have expired… Everything seems to indicate that the painter sacrificed himself for the salvation of humanity.

Robert Combas does not stop at a vision of the world in one piece. He feels the need to show and draw attention on every aspect of life: blood, sex, violence, war, death, god and men…. Especially men! He is the cradle of chaos and life.

Numerous philosophers and intellectuals – like Michel Onfray – have studied and abundantly commented Combas’s work. Exhibitions held at the Grimaldi Forum of Monaco (2016), the Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon (2012) or the Seoul Museum of Art (2006) confirm the worldwide interest for this major artist.

For the first time, Robert Combas will show his most recent works in South Africa.

Jean Vergès, 2017

PETIT DIABLE À RAISINS ET FLEURS. ENTOURAGE DE FEUILLES 2016, mixed media on paper, 50 x 64,5 cm GORGONE DE RIRES DE JOIES Petit entortillement de petites têtes de Serpent dansa Rolando. Rolando danse serpents.

Gorgone de rires de joies. 2016, mixed media on paper, 50 x 64,5 cm

TÊTE CROIX ET MONSIEUR TORTUEUX 2016, mixed media on paper, 50 x 64,5 cm TÊTE PLEINE DE MOTS (detail) 2016, mixed media on paper, 50 x 64,5 cm

Sans titre 2017, mixed media on paper mounted on canvas, 63 x 48 cm

Sans titre 2017, mixed media on paper mounted on canvas, 62,5 x 47,5 cm

Installation view Michel Houellebecq Rester vivant, Palais de Tokyo Paris 2016. Photo Š Harald Gottschalk

SELECTED BIOGRAPHY

1957

• Birth of Robert Combas in Lyon.

1977

• Robert Combas, Ketty Brindel, Hervé and Buddy Di Rosa get together as adolescents with similar preoccupations: music, rock, punk, cartoon, graphic arts and humour. Combas learns the technique of engraving and creates the premises of Figuration libre.

1978

• The material to paint is expensive. Combas uses all kinds of recycled material. Together with Ketty Brindel and Hervé Di Rosa, they form the musical group les Démodés.

1980

• Combas settles in Paris with Hervé di Rosa, Ketty Brindel and Louis Jammes.

• Meets major dealers Bruno Bischofberger and Daniel Templon who both buy his work.

1981 • First solo exhibition abroad at galerie Eva Keppel, Düsseldorf / galerie Swart, Amsterdam.

• First article on the artist in the newspaper Libération: Too poor to buy a canvas.

• Ateliers 81/82, ARC-Museum of modern art, ville de Paris.

• Let’s go, children of Picasso, article written in L’Express where Robert Combas is designated as

the leader of Figuration libre.

1982

• First solo show in Paris, galerie Yvon Lambert with whom Combas starts an intense and stimulating collaboration.

1983

• Exhibition Blanchard, Boisrond, Combas, Di Rosa, Groninger Museum, Groningen, Holland.

• First solo show in New York at Leo Castelli Gallery.

1984 • Robert Combas gets a real style with very complex works where a thick black line circles the colors.

• 5/5: Figuration libre France/USA, with young french painters (Blanchard, Boisrond, Combas,

Di Rosa, Jammes) and americans (Basquiat, Crash, Haring et Scharf). Coincidence or not, a

few months later, Keith Haring starts to paint pink figures looking alike the ones of Combas.

1985

• Retrospective at Museum Abbaye Sainte-Croix, Sables d’Olonne (France)/ Gemeentemuseum, Helmond (Holland)/ Museum of Art and Industry in Saint-Etienne (France).

1986

• Second personal exhibition at Leo Castelli gallery, New York.

1987

• Personal exhibition, CAPC, Bordeaux (France)/ Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (Holland).

• Participates in L’Époque, la mode, la morale, la passion, National Museum of modern art, Centre Pompidou, Paris.

• Meets Geneviève Boteilla who becomes his muse and girlfriend. The works of Combas being like pages of an intimate diary, the theme of love is more and more present in the work.

1989

• Robert Combas realizes all the visual advertising for the exhibition Nos années 80, Cartier Foundation. He becomes an emblematic figure of the last 10 years of creation.

• First exhibition in Korea, gallery Blue, Seoul.

1990 • Exhibition at Wolf Schulz Gallery, San Francisco.

• Combas-Toulouse-Lautrec, Museum Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi (France)/ Museum in Blois/ Taipei

Fine Arts Museum,Taïwan.

1993

• Du simple et du double, Museum of modern art, Paris.

2000

• Marilyn Combas, simultaniously in 3 galeries, Combas appropriates himself the absolute iconic figure of femininity: Marilyn Monroe, working directly on Warhol serigraphs.

2002 • Combas settles his studio in Ivry-sur-Seine, first time he owns a place.

2003 • One Combas season, Combas exhibits in 8 different places in Provence big size paintings on the

Installation view Michel Houellebecq Rester vivant Palais de Tokyo, Paris 2016.

Photo © Harald Gottschalk

theme of Middle Ages, King René and mountain Sainte-Victoire (painted by Cézanne).

2005 • The monumental Goddess Isis-Venus is presented in

Mots d’oreille, exhibition in parallel of the

Venice Biennal, in the Magazzini del Sale.

• Big Bang, National Museum of modern art, Centre

Georges-Pompidou, Paris.

2006 • Savoir-Faire, major itinerant retrospective in South Korea.

2007 • Cinéphage à gogo, Art Centre La Malmaison, Cannes

(during the Cannes Festival) presents a great diversity

of works on the theme of movies.

2008

• Qu’es Aco? Vincent Van Gogh Foundation, Arles.

2009 • Le Frimeur flamboyant, Maison européenne of

photography, Paris, gives Combas the opportunity of

giving his answer of painter to photography.

2010

• Combas meets Lucas Mancione with whom he starts a major work of musical creation.

2011

• They form a group : the Sans Pattes. They perform in the frame of the exhibition Psychedelic Continents organized by the French Cultural Institute, Pointe-Noire, Congo.

2012

• Greatest Hits, we start by the beginning and end by the end, Retrospective, Museum of contemporary art, Lyon (France). Major event lived by Combas as an apotheosis, where he occupies 3000 square meters of the museum to express his historical course and his experimental work.

Combas settles his painting and musical studio in the museum where he lives during 3 months.

2014

• Maurice j’arrive! (Maurice I arrive!), French Institute, Maurice Island. Exhibition, musical concert by the Sans Pattes and conference Trance is knowledge, a shaman named Combas by the famous French philosopher Michel Onfray.

2015 • Bonjour la France, Seongnam Art Center, Korea /

Goyang Cultural Foundation.

• Artistes à la Une pour la Liberté, (Artists featured for

Freedom), Palais de Tokyo, Paris.

A presentation of the most famous first pages of daily

newspapers revisited by 40 artists.

2016/17 • Robert Combas, 80s and 90s, Retrospective at the

Grimaldi Forum, Monaco.

• The Combas belonging to Yvon Lambert, Collection

Lambert, Avignon.

CAPE TOWN ART FAIR BOOTH D5 - FEB. 2017

Cover : TÊTE PLEINE DE MOTS (detail) 2016, mixed media on paper, 50 x 64,5 cm

Cape Town International Convention Centre Convention Square - 1 Lower Long St Cape Town - South AFrica

Below : Installation view Michel Houellebecq Rester vivant, Palais de Tokyo, Paris 2016. Photo © Harald Gottschalk All pictures © Atelier Robert Combas

www.carolinesmulders.com By appointment: 4, rue Martel 75010 Paris Mobile : +33 (0) 6 09 02 66 31 Mail : caroline.ilovemyjob@gmail.com