AB-CCL-1973-003 — Blue Scene (1973)

Technical information

Title : Blue Scene
Date : 1973
Technique : Oil on paper
Dimensions : 50 × 65 cm
Location : Private collection

Biographical / historical context

Dated 1973, this “Blue Scene” belongs to a phase in which André Breuillaud favors nocturnal atmospheres and lighter supports, conducive to glazes, reworking, and transparency. The place reference (Vence) situates the work within the Mediterranean climate of the studio, which the artist translates less through real motifs than through the sensation of an open, uncertain space charged with moods and reverie.

In these years, the human figure remains central but undergoes metamorphosis: it slips from a recognizable body toward a hybrid organism, at times eroticized, at times phantom-like. A palette dominated by blues and greens acts as a mental “chamber” in which tensions between desire, fear, and curiosity are replayed in a deliberately equivocal symbolic language.

Formal / stylistic description

The composition is built on a diagonal that draws the eye from a darkened foreground toward a lighter zone, like a clearing within the blue. Humanoid forms appear by emergence: elongated bodies, standing or surfacing silhouettes, globular heads where the eye—isolated—becomes a sign.

In the distance, space seems traversed by layers and veils, with softened edges and very gentle transitions that let the paper breathe. Drawing remains perceptible, sometimes scratched or reworked with a point, and comes to specify gestures, hands, or profiles.

The color fields are never sealed: Breuillaud prefers superimposed glazes that make the blue values vibrate toward green, and milkier highlights that catch the light. The whole produces a suspended scene—both intimate and cosmic—in which figures seem to float in an aqueous or astral medium.

Comparative analysis / related works

Through its tonality and imagery, the work foreshadows the large blue canvases of 1974, where apparitions thicken and “stars” or luminous discs emerge as compositional poles. One already finds here an unfixed space, crossed by filaments and drips, as well as the use of the eye as an autonomous motif, detached from the face.

This “Blue Scene” also dialogues with the oils on paper from the early 1970s: the same economy of means, the same active role of the support, and the same articulation between drawing and painting. It thus stands as a marker between more compact compositions (where the figure occupies almost the entire field) and more scenographic devices in which several “actors” coexist within an atmospheric depth.

Justification of dating and attribution

The 1973 dating is consistent with the formal and chromatic vocabulary: predominance of deep blues modulated by greens, floating silhouettes, and lightly incised lines that leave the paper’s weave visible. The format (50 × 65 cm) and the technique (oil on paper) correspond to a practice of research and variation characteristic of this period, in which Breuillaud tests arrangements before amplifying them on canvas.

The attribution to André Breuillaud rests on the signature and on stylistic constants: elongated anatomies, faces reduced to a few indices, eye-signs, and the staging of an “inner theatre” where eroticism mingles with the fantastic. The note indicating reproduction, dating, and title in the Michelle Philippon Catalogue (1992) further stabilizes the identification of the work.

Provenance / exhibitions / publications

Vence. Reproduced, dated, and titled in the Michelle Philippon Catalogue (1992).