Technical information
- Title : Proto-Entities
- Date : 1972
- Technique : Oil on canvas
- Dimensions : 38 × 46 cm
- Location : Private collection
Biographical / historical context
In 1972, André Breuillaud makes a decisive shift: the dramaturgy of the red systems of 1971 fades in favor of a bluer, more cosmic space, where being is no longer caught in a burning matrix but tested by a milieu of appearance. The stay in Vence, evoked in the documentation, reinforces this inflection through a brighter light and sharper contrasts, and through a return to intermediate formats suited to experimentation.
In this context, the work functions as a study of “proto-forms” destined to unfold in the large canvases of 1973: a testing ground in which the still-residual figure merges with an autonomous organic mutation.
Formal / stylistic description
The composition is built on a deep blue field modulated by darker passages and cold gleams, as if the surface were lit from the side. Vertical masses, close to blocks or walls, structure the space and carve out shadowed cavities.
Against this armature, a network of supple entities appears: yellow or greenish bodies, sketched torsos, liquefied limbs, isolated eyes, larval forms that slide and expand without a skeleton. At times heavily textured, the paint holds transparent veils and denser traces; drawing intervenes discreetly to fix a gaze, an articulation, or to mark an unstable boundary between figure and milieu.
Comparative analysis / related works
Compared with large blue-cycle compositions such as Spectralis or Blue Jellyfish, Proto-Entities retains the scale of the laboratory: forms are not yet fully constituted, but seized at the moment of emergence, between dissolution and reconstitution.
The comparison with Obsession (1972) highlights the displacement of the light source—here colder and more external—and the abandonment of a “scene” in favor of an incubatory space. Unlike Origin, which tends toward a unifying nucleus, the work maintains a plurality of dispersed appearances, like an image-book of remnants. The suggested proximity with Intra-Somnia points to the same logic of intermediate states, transposed here into an atmospheric blue rather than an interior chamber.
Justification of dating and attribution
The dating to 1972 accords with the blue-yellow palette and the establishment of the first semi-autonomous beings described in the documentation, characteristic of this transitional phase toward the blue cycle. The handling—alternating fluid zones, thicker reworkings, and marked textures—relates to the material economy observed around Spectralis and Cosmic Expansion, while retaining the experimental format associated with the Vence studies. Taken together, these formal and contextual criteria support a secure attribution to André Breuillaud.
© Bruno Restout — Catalogue raisonné André Breuillaud