© Philippe Bonan
"I've always wanted to do something totally new, I've always wanted to stand out from the crowd. I think I'm what they call a ‘dandy’."
Robert Combas is a French artist whose practice encompasses painting, illustration, sculpture, and music. Involved with the Figuration Libre of the 1980s, he is known for his indulgent paintings which feature characters with distinctive features. Combas combines mythologies and tribal masks, leaving no space on the canvas empty. In a condensed way, dots, streaks, lines, and labyrinthine interweavings come together; solar force and chromatic overload are his trademark. His figurative style draws on popular culture, graffiti, comics, and street art.