AB-CCL-1972-003 — Spectralis (1972)

Technical information

Title : Spectralis
Date : 1972
Technique : Oil on canvas
Dimensions : 46 × 55 cm
Location : Private collection

Biographical / historical context

In 1972, Breuillaud’s painting definitively leaves behind the logic of red magma to open onto a nocturnal, cold, spectral space—one of the foundations of the CCL period. Matter becomes atmosphere: a liquid thickness in which beings dissolve and re-emerge, as if the image were recording flows of energy rather than fully formed bodies.

Spectralis belongs to this moment of invention of “spectral blue,” prior to the stabilization of the cosmic blue of the following years. The source notice mentions “Vence” on the reverse, placing the work within the studio context and reinforcing its position at this pivotal phase.

Formal / stylistic description

The composition is structured around a luminous vertical entity whose circular yellow-white head stands out against the surrounding blue. Dark striations and ascending strokes cut through this disc like antennae or lines of tension, lending the figure a presence that is at once organic and energetic.

Below this clear summit, a darker brown-black axis stretches downward in a run of paint and organizes the space. Around the central being, peripheral forms appear in fragments—filiform silhouettes, barely sketched faces, open membranes, presences in the process of taking shape. Nothing is stabilized; everything remains on the threshold, as if the blue medium were generating its inhabitants as it goes.

The blue itself is built in layers: glazes, more opaque bands, greenish veins, and zones of absorption compose an almost abyssal depth. The alternation between smooth passages and rougher reworkings, between incisive marks and diffuse halos, produces a porous, breathing surface—an intermediate state between the thickness of the preceding years and the atmospheric dilation to come.

Comparative analysis / related works

Compared with the works of 1971, where figures remain trapped in matter, Spectralis establishes a floating gravity: bodies are no longer bogged down, but form within a nocturnal medium. Unlike Origin, in which yellow functions as a central matrix, yellow here is only a luminous signal—a point of irradiation within a world dominated by blue.

The painting precedes the more structured blue compositions of 1972–1974: the entities are still incomplete, less “cosmic” than spectral, less biological than post-biological. This phase of instability—where being oscillates between vegetal, animal, and mechanical form—lays the groundwork for an extra-human typology that will later emerge with greater clarity.

Justification of dating and attribution

The dating to 1972 is consistent with the presence of a deep blue already autonomous, yet still traversed by transitional greens and punctuated by occasional yellow halos, without the large stabilized circular structures of the years that follow. The central extra-human entity, not yet fixed into a stable type, corresponds to the emergence of the spectral register specific to the beginning of the CCL period. The source notice mentions “Vence” on the reverse, confirming the chronological context. The attribution is further supported by Breuillaud’s characteristic signature: the hybridization of kingdoms, the construction of space as a living medium, and the use of the line as an inner nerve or tension.

Provenance / exhibitions / publications

Vence studio (noted on the reverse, according to the source notice).

Internal classification noted in the source notice: AR (extra-human form / spectral blue).