Le Roi Soleil

1987

Acrylic on printed fabric

218 x 134 cm


Signed lower left Combas and dated 1987

Estimate
3,400,000 - 5,500,000
874,000 - 1,414,000
112,700 - 182,200
Sold Price
6,480,000
1,678,756
215,282
Inquiry


Ravenel Spring Auction 2017

069

Robert COMBAS (French, b. 1957)

Le Roi Soleil


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PROVENANCE:
Private collection, Asia

Catalogue Note:
LE ROI SOLEIL
ROBERT COMBAS

Robert Combas was born in Lyon, France. Combas was the leader of La Figuration Libre movement of the 80s in France, and is regarded as one of the most prolific artists of today. Combas is a multi-talented artist in painting, sculpting, poetry, and music. The amount of energy and passion Combas has for arts is just the same as for guitar, as he once said that mine painting is rock (Ma peinture c'est du rock). It is easy to see that he would excel in them as both activities allow him to express his imaginations wildly and spontaneously. For Combas who just turned the age of sixty this May, there' re mere traces on the appearances, and as seen above, his avant-garde minds with unconventional styling reveals the mischievous and energetic side of him. Combas is continuously evolving and in search of new inspirations, as a result, his creations are rich and innovative.

In the 1980s, as people seek for freedom of expressions as their core values, the result of this social phenomenon gave birth to the rise of La Figuration Libre. Combas draws inspirations from his surroundings, and often depicts various kinds of people as his centre theme; he uses bold black contour lines and protruding eyes to depict the world he sees. The studio of Combas was situated at Barbés near the Gare du Nord of Paris, an area that is surrounded with multi-cultures and ethnicity groups; whether it be the brightly-coloured African clothing, exaggerated Japanese comics, or Buddhist influences and Muslim beliefs, they all turned into the resourceful inspirations base for Combas. Some of his works are filled with colorful yet violent scenes, sometimes it possesses humorous look as a mockery of the society, whichever it may be, they all send the same message, which is the need to embrace a diverse society we live in.

Combas had his first solo exhibition when he was only 23, and held a major retrospective at the age of 27, the realization of his style got more sophisticated during 1984-1988. Le Roi Soleil was finished in 1987, the same year where his works was chosen to be shown at the March exhibition L'époque, la mode, la morale, la passion - Aspects de l'art aujourd'hui 1977-1987 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In the works of Combas, there are always infinite imaginations and vibrant colors, such as seen in the work Le Roi Soleil, it is given with a story line on the back of the canvas. The King of the Sun was flirting with a lady named Corrine, and the purple thing was her brother, also a homosexual, who was flirting with the King of the Sun and the red hatted Arabian who is crying because he had consumed too much onions and garlic. The story fills the space with humour and strong visual sensations. The painting is composed of black bold contour lines on top of saturated strong colors, with uninhibited styles and saturated colors, all making this painting make much more pleasurable to look at.

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