Robert Combas

The work

Flying van Gogh No. 57/100
2009
108 x 41 x 5.5 cm
Painted resin

The work is an electric guitar that forms part of a series of 100 pieces, each painted in the style of a famous artist from art history, in this case Van Gogh.

The combination of the painting of an acclaimed artist and an object that is not only typical of rock culture, such as the electric guitar, but also has a body shape typical of heavy metal bands, humorously accentuates the contrast between the traditional concepts of high and low culture, that is, between academic culture and popular culture.

The artist

Combas’s goal is to create figurative art in which irreverence and humor are combined through themes from contemporary popular culture. He is one of the leading exponents of a movement called Figuración Libre (Free Figuration), which in the 1980s called for all kinds of artistic freedom without obligations to fashions, trends, or movements.

His colors are vivid, his compositions saturated with images in which the apparent chaos often overwhelms the viewer’s gaze.
He paints, as he says, “to have fun and to entertain.”