ROBERT COMBAS

Where did Robert Combas grow up and study art?

Born on 25 May 1957 in Lyon, France, Robert Combas spent his childhood in Sète. He demonstrated an early passion for art, attending art school at the age of nine. In 1975, he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Montpellier, where he began to develop his distinctive expressive style.

What is Robert Combas’ artistic style?

Bold, unmodulated colour, fervent compositions, and a spectrum of cultural references characterise Combas’s art. His works feature chaotic or violent scenes filled with eccentric figures, combining an irreverent humour with pointed social commentary.

Combas sought to break free from traditional artistic constraints, stating on his website that his ‘work comes from scribbling rather than from what I learnt at art school’. Despite this rejection of formal training, Combas won the favour of Bernard Ceysson, then curator of an art museum in St Etienne, who offered to exhibit his work. He would also later meet influential art dealers Bruno Bischofberger and Daniel Templon, who would take an interest in his work.

Throughout his career, Combas has often return to familiar themes and imagery, such as war, sexuality, rock bands and musicians, as well as riffing on art history and antiquity. However, these grand themes and subject matter are often portrayed with a sense of irony and satire.

What is Robert Combas’ Figuration Libre?

The artist is considered a founding member of French Figuration Libre, which has links to the Bad Painting and Neo-expressionist painting movements of America and Europe, Junge Wilde in Germany and Transvanguardia in Italy. These subversive and hedonistic painting trends were a countertrend to conceptual art’s minimalist tendencies and intellectualism.

Where has Robert Combas exhibited?

Combas gained international recognition in the early 1980s, exhibiting alongside artists like Keith Haring at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York in 1983.

His work has been the subject of numerous major solo exhibitions, including

• Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1987).
• Robert Combas, Seoul Museum of Art (20 December 2006–11 February 2011).
• Robert Combas, Greatest Hits, Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon (24 February–15 July 2012).
• Retrospective Exhibition of Works of Robert Combas, Grimaldi Forum, Monaco (7 August–11 September 2016).

In 2012, the artist’s retrospective Greatest Hits at Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon featured a public studio onsite at the museum alongside many works previously hidden within private collections. During the exhibition, Combas continued creating new work, writing, and playing music for the public in what was described as a ‘very rock’n’roll atmosphere’.

Robert Combas currently lives and works in Paris, where he remains an active and influential presence in the art world. Follow him on Instagram here.

Hazel Ellis | Ocula | 2025