Technical information
- Title : Obsession
- Date : 1972
- Technique : Oil on paper (HSPap)
- Dimensions : 34 × 26 cm
- Location : Unknown
Biographical / historical context
In 1972, Breuillaud undertakes a decisive transition: after the large red matrices and magmatic tensions of 1971, he narrows the field toward a more inward register, where the figure concentrates instead of exploding. The so‑called CCL period (Cosmic–Cellular–Luminous) cools the chromatic range, dematerializes volumes, and transforms organic forms into nuclei, membranes, and fleeting apparitions.
The choice of paper supports this shift. Matter becomes more fragile and powdery, worked through veils and erasures—well suited to an iconography of obsession in the literal sense: a mental form that returns, folds back, and reforms, never resolving into stable anatomy.
Formal / stylistic description
The composition is occupied by a compact central mass, white and pinkish, whose general curve suggests an embryo or a bundle of flesh folded in on itself. Within this volume, fragments of bodies appear in touches—multiplied breasts, organic pockets, incomplete limbs, sketched profiles—as if several states of a single organism had been superimposed without ever being hierarchized.
The blue ground, laid down evenly, does not open onto a landscape space: it isolates the form as if in a mental chamber. This cold expanse prevents any escape and intensifies the impression of fixation. The figure does not advance or narrate; it insists, tightens, repeats—driven by a movement of return to the center.
The technique on paper heightens the sensation of suspended skin. Milky passages rub against nervous, almost venous lines that fissure the surface and draw an interior cartography. Where the painting of 1971 built density through thickness, Obsession constructs presence through veil, indecision, and the very fragility of the color deposit.
Comparative analysis / related works
Against the large red compositions of 1971, the work marks a clear inflection: the expansive magma withdraws, violence concentrates into a silent cramp. The figure has not yet dissolved into a blue atmosphere, as will happen in later cosmic developments, but condenses into a compact focus—still carnal, still close to a memory of the body.
Compared with the papers of 1972–1974, Obsession stands out for its degree of concentration: the form is tightened, almost closed, whereas the following years will open membranes further and stretch beings into filaments. This intermediate position makes the work a chromatic and morphological pivot between the end of the reds and the gradual installation of the blue world.
Justification of dating and attribution
The “72” inscribed on the work provides a direct dating clue. The cold blue‑white range, the powdery matter enabled by the paper support, and the way the figure is condensed into a compact nucleus correspond to the beginning of the CCL phase, before forms become more threadlike and aerial.
The attribution rests on the coherence of the handling: superimposed veils, fine incisive line, and the construction of a composite organism in which the biological is conceived as an inner form. The source notice also indicates reproduction, dating, and title in the Michelle Philippon Catalogue (1972), reinforcing the chronological anchoring.
Provenance / exhibitions / publications
Vence studio (according to the source notice).
Michelle Philippon Catalogue (1972).
© Bruno Restout — Catalogue raisonné André Breuillaud