“Come to me […] I want to tell you about stupidity, violence, beauty, love, hate, seriousness, and fun, logic, and absurdity that make up our lives.”
Robert Combas, quoted from: ex. cat. Robert Combas. Joker, Die Galerie, Frankfurt a. Main, Ludwig-Museum Koblenz, 2007/08, p. 142.

In the late 1970s, Robert Combas studied painting at the art academy in Montpellier, where his works were shown in his first solo exhibition in 1980. By the 1980s, Combas had already established a style with a high recognition value: he created vibrant, colorful, and exuberant paintings that earned him a reputation as the provocateur of the French art scene. “Les trompettes” is an impressive example of this style and can be considered a particularly characteristic work from the artist's most progressive and significant creative phase: Grotesque, exaggerated figures inhabit a pictorial surface that Combas fills with his comic-like figurative painting. Even the background of the turbulent scene is filled with broad lines that, on closer inspection, turn out to be faces contorted into grimaces. With vivid colors and dark outlines, the artist creates an exaggerated effect that viewers can hardly escape. “They are never calm or even quiet, but always [...] an invitation, a challenge. Life pulsates in every corner [...]” (Peter Femfert, in: ibid., preface). The protagonists and their brass instruments hint at Combas' deep connection to rock and punk music, which has always been a big part of his life. In 1978, he started a band called “Les Démodés” with a couple of friends, making songs that mixed Dadaist poetry with simple, almost brutal music. Today, Combas still performs occasionally with his current band, “Les Sans Pattes” (The Legless).

His works from the 1980s show clear links to the German “Neue Wilde” (New Wild) movement and the American pop art scene of the time, centered around Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Along with other painters of his generation – in particular, Hervé di Rosa, François Boisrond, and Rémi Blanchard – Combas is therefore often counted among the “Figuration libre,” a rather subcultural artistic movement that emerged in the late 1970s as a counterpoint to the ubiquitous abstract and conceptual art of the time, exploring entirely new pictorial themes in utterly figurative, often narrative compositions.

In 1983, Combas' works, including the present large-format work “Les trompettes,” were presented in his first solo exhibition in New York at the legendary Leo Castelli Gallery, arguably the most important gallery for contemporary art in the second half of the 20th century. Another solo exhibition at Castelli followed in 1986.
Today, Combas can look back on several museum exhibitions, including solo shows at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1987), the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan (1990), the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris (1993), and the Seoul Museum of Art in Seoul (2006). In 2012, the Musée d'Art Contemporain (MAC) in Lyon honored the artist with a comprehensive retrospective. [CH]