Pierre Combet-descombes (1885-1966) - Female Nude From Behind, 1928, Charcoal On Paper

Pierre Combet-Descombes (1885-1966)
Female nude from behind, 1928
Charcoal on paper
Signed with stamp lower right
Dated “26 sept 28” and annotated lower left
Dimensions of the work: 49 x 39 cm
Provenance: Master Guillaumot, artist's studio sale, December 19, 1967
Slight trace of sunstroke on the upper part

Artist from Lyon born in 1885, Pierre Combet-Descombes received a brief training at the School of Fine Arts in Lyon, which he joined in 1902. He quickly turned away from official education and presented his first works at the Salon in 1905. A figure of the Lyon artistic avant-garde, Pierre Combet-Descombes was one of the founders of the Les Ziniars collective: self-proclaimed ignoramuses refuting academic teaching. These exercised a real influence on the artistic life of the inter-war period and participated in the blossoming of modern art in Lyon. Deeming the Salon d'Automne too timid, they created the Salon du Sud-Est in 1925 where they confronted their work with that of artists active on the Parisian scene such as Henri Matisse or Paul Signac.

Cantor of modernity, Pierre Combet-Descombes is however reluctant to abandon figuration. Feeding on reality, her work addresses different themes in which the female body predominates. The female nude delivered to all excesses haunts his youthful work (period to which our sheet belongs) before the artist calms down. He celebrates the female nude in all his work (paintings, wall decorations, illustrations) by attributing to it allegorical functions, oscillating “from the celebration of the Virgin with the lily to the quartering of the prostitute”*. He produces expressionist work by distorting reality in such a way as to elicit an emotional reaction from the viewer. He stylizes and perverts the bodies of his models seized in suggestive or even erotic poses. Our sheet bears witness to a feverish line that runs over the voluptuous curves of the body it depicts.

*Jean-Jacques Lerrant, Tribute to Pierre Combet-Descombes, Fiftieth anniversary of the death of the founder of the Salon du Sud-Est, 2016.