He is widely recognized as a progenitor of the Figuration Libre movement that began in Paris around 1980 as a reaction to the art establishment in general and minimalism and conceptual art in particular. He was influenced by the powerful wave of German and Italian figuration of the early 1980s, which included such artists as Georg Baselitz, Jorg Immendorf, Sandro Chia and A. R. Penck. Despite Combas's formal art education, his painting is nearly always discussed in the context of his working-class roots, his dislike of 'high culture' and his rise to fame and fortune. During his final year at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Combas had decided to paint in the manner in which he had as a child. His belief in the power of a more direct, less technical and less sophisticated style of painting led to many of the early battle scenes for which he is renowned, for example Punks, Rockers, Skinheads, Mods, Hell's Angels and Country Rock Fans in a Love Battle (acrylic on canvas, 1982; priv. col., see 1985 exh. cat., no. 17). In such works Combas believed that he had transformed his 'doodling' on endless note-pads into full-scale art. Many of Combas's figures are grotesque characters, imaginary or fictitious; others appear as village idiots or fools. Although he took a cue from such sources as Pop art, comic-strip art, television, advertising material, American graffiti art and in particular the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, from 1985 he focused on works that turn towards more traditional themes and classical genre paintings.

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