Upon entry into the Fine Arts in 1977, Robert COMBAS is noted for his original and innovative design. At age 22, he invented the art movement "La Figuration Libre". For over 30 years now, his creative frenzy is constantly experimenting with new technical means to address numerous topics while hybridizing the media to give birth to a work as dense as it is large. Combas, who is a prolific artist of excellence - Pébéo looks into his personal relationship with the colours in his work: as a universe of symbols and a language unto itself.

Combas: I like all colours! And I think black and white are colours in their own right. The key for me is how to show it. On one hand there are, the colours of nature, and secondly, there are the colours of the paint products that we use.

Combas: Discovering the new colours invented by manufacturers is part of my creative activity. I am fond of innovations and creative leisure products that offer me, as the artist, new opportunities, new areas to explore. I experience all sorts of effects on different medias that are utilized. I also distract them from their primary use, but the diversion is not an end in itself.

Combas: It's in my studio, Quincampoix Street, that I first discovered the paintings and stained glass paintings on cloth. These are lines that offer a wide choice of colours ... I chose a carrier and then I redesigned the paper in a glass. The brand was American and suggesting paint flakes. I told Pébéo, a manufacturer who can still answer this. Note that depending on the size of the table, I can easily use hundreds of tubes.

Combas: Painting with Dyna colours is fascinating to use. I love the metallic colours and the brightness that reacts differently to light and on different media.

Combas: It is very important for us artists, that manufacturers like Pébéo are innovating painting. Today, the medium of contemporary art is no longer represented by the painting. The artists, in a minority, are regarded as too traditional. For my part, I always use products with the qualities of acrylic: fast drying, low odor, can create effects ...

Combas: Yes, I need to work on several levels. The streaks are a way for me to add drama to my work, to free myself from my illustrative side to use graphic work on colour. It is a way of working different styles. I often surround drips of black. At one point, they were a way to represent the plastic curtains found in summer in southern France.

Combas: Brushes are painted as sculptures; they have a close relationship with basic, primitive, art, which differs from the naive art that believes in making pretty distorted figures. When I created these sculptures, as small characters, they were reinvented every time I wanted to evoke the side of "wasteful" colour, and brushes that are the artists who sometimes do not respect their work tools. It is a means of redemption, the idea of restoring the value to a noble object that has been abused and destroyed. And in this religious symbolism, these little characters are transformed into a crucifix ... the symbol of the crucifix is hung above the bed with their wings like birds ... It was during this exhibition in the Abbey Sylvacane that their symbolic dimension has really been achieved, it was magnificent.

Combas: I struggle to get out of this pattern, but I am back to the black line: I am a prisoner. Why? It's inexplicable. In my technical work, I attempt to diversify my style to prove that I am not locked into a particular style. I must survive this. It suffered a stroke, which is part of me and it reflects ambivalence between the line and the thing painted. As I see the words in the tampering, I 'fumble' styles and colours. I like to leave traces and drips in my colour. I do not like the effects to be too clean, too uniform or too smooth. I prefer for example the technique of thrown colour, which is more spontaneous.

Combas: In my next show I worked in another way: there will be 4 rooms. I start from a design, and I worked with different techniques such as collage. As in what I call the sequence tables, painting and colours allow me to create things, effects and degrees more or less humorous or dramatic. For me, the symbol in the colour is everywhere; it is a language unto itself.