Technical information
- Title: The Walls
- Date: 1956
- Technique: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 65 × 54 cm
- Location: Location: Unknown
Biographical / historical context
The title The Walls reflects a major preoccupation for Breuillaud in the mid-1950s: to think of the canvas as a construction of surfaces, limits and passages. At this moment, the artist seems to move away from the description of a place in favour of an almost tactile experience of space.
In this logic, the “wall” is not merely an architectural element: it becomes a plastic principle. The painting explores what separates and what connects, what closes and what opens.
Formal / stylistic description
The work is structured around verticals and rectangular planes that respond to one another like partitions. Values remain restrained: greys, muted greens and subdued browns, with lighter zones serving as breathing spaces. The eye is guided by superimpositions: some planes advance, others recede, suggesting recesses.
Material and edge treatment contribute to a mural effect: the forms are not cut-out silhouettes, but “laid” surfaces, sometimes rubbed, sometimes reworked. The composition gives the impression of a space to be crossed—not through a single perspective, but through a succession of thresholds.
Comparative analysis / related works
Compared with Grey Forms (1956), The Walls emphasises verticality and the idea of a partition. Where Grey Forms allows a luminous centre, The Walls seems to favour a more frontal reading, as if facing a recomposed architecture.
The painting can also be set against the works of 1955, where elements of city or alley were still carried by colour. Here colour becomes discreet: it differentiates planes and establishes atmosphere more than it evokes a motif.
Justification of dating and attribution
The dating 1956 is compatible with the chromatic economy and the construction in vertical panels characteristic of the “mural” researches of that year.
The signature cannot be identified on the available reproduction. Attribution is based on formal coherence (interlocking planes, nuanced values, architectured organisation) and on correspondence with other works dated 1956 within the corpus.
Provenance / exhibitions / publications
Provenance: not documented to date.
Exhibitions: not recorded.
Publications: not recorded.
© Bruno Restout - Catalogue raisonné André Breuillaud