Robert Combas Biography
see website www.combas.com for paintings...
Short autobiography  

Written by Robert Combas in 1982

Free figuration, as Ben called it, is a kind of painting which started off In the most basic way. I invented the style, aIl by myself at the art school ln Montpellier, in front of hundreds of witnesses.

After two years at nursery school, seven years primary school, five years at secondury school, three years of foundation course at art school, came an enormous relief: I was going to do my finals. The next three years would end up with the national diploma of painting.

The years of freedom. OVER with orders ! OVER wfth scamped work. New I was left to decide by myself. I had plenty of time and only one thing to do : paint and draw.

It was an otburst of graphics: paintings, silkscreen paintings, etching, drawaings, sketching, comic strips, writings. I had as many styles that amuse ma a I had previously had orders which annoyed me. I would take work home, or do it at the art school. The teachers would criticize it, we'd talk about it. I was FRE. From that freedom, I decided to do a complety new art, liberated from all constraints : the story of an average kind of bloke, and sometimes even less than average : average intellectually, average tehnically, average phyically, average morally, strongly average, really average, or not really. AVERAGE+ AVERAGE+ AVERAGE +........that makes a lot of AVERAGES, ( and a lot of means...). And so, free figuration was invended.

A figuration which is meant to be funny, relaxed and does not denyits primitive instincts and a desire for CULTURE. To be honest with oneself : "No Paulette oes not like liver", he has misunderstood again ! The aim of the painter, it's that, if his father telles him : "Go and get me a packet of cigarettes", he answers "No!", and he gets two slps right in the face. The slaps in the face give him the revlation He has briliant ideas like: he gets off the table during a family meal, lets off three farts, drinks two glasses of wine, and scofs two es at a time. Or he gets up in the morning, in a good mood, and tarts the song of an unknown poet : "Let's pump the shit, let's pump it gaily, and chuck everyone who pisses us off into it!" The moral of the story is : that all those who don't like Combas's paintings will end up in the shit !

PS : Thanks to my Uncle Francis, known as the tall one ( ex frog man who taught me that beautiful songs of the shit pump when I was little).

Thanks to Ketty ( Catherine Brindel) for her passionate and ardent support

Thanks to Voyou the cat, fot his efficient support.

Kisses to Gran and Love to Mum, dad and all the family.



Written by Robert Combas in 1982