ARTISTS Mariko
Mariko
Florence Combescure
Florence Combescure was born in Avignon on 11 July 1958. She moved to Africa at a very young age and grew up in Madagascar, where she became fascinated by the work of local artisans from her teenage years onwards.
During those years, she deepened her knowledge of different sculpture techniques by travelling between Kenya, Mauritius, and Île de la Réunion, as well as Corsica and the Ivory Coast. For Florence, her time in Kenya marked a decisive moment: at just 12 years old, she approached sculpture thanks to her acquaintance with the Maasai tribe. At the age of 14, she had already decided to become an artist; however, as she was too young to attend art school, she took private lessons from the director of the School of Fine Arts in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, where she had moved with her family. Her art has always been influenced by Salvador Dalí, whom she liked to call “that true friend” she unfortunately never met.
Florence’s artistic inspiration, in her own words, took shape when she went to Figueres in Spain, Salvador Dalí’s birthplace, where in silence and contemplation she found new sources of creative inspiration. In the early 1980s, she left Africa to continue her artistic training in France, where she studied clay art and sculpture at the Beaux-Arts de Montpellier.
The choice to depict The Revolt of the Samurai of Shimabara with figures riding imposing rhinoceroses, an animal for which Salvador Dalí had a morbid fascination, is certainly not accidental. Today, in her workshop in the small Corsican village of Santa Lucia di Talla, Florence, always accompanied in her deepest self by her “friend Salvador,” creates her surrealist-inspired art.
01 MARIKO
GEISHE AND SAMURAI
Mariko interview
ARION
Mariko artworks.
LA DANCE
Mariko artworks.