AB-MP2-1954-001 — Pigalle at Night (I) (1954)

Technical information

Title: Pigalle at Night (I)
Date: 1954
Technique: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 130 × 89 cm
Location: Private collection

Biographical / historical context

In 1954, Breuillaud reaches the end of his great Montmartre urban period. The markets, streets and everyday silhouettes so characteristic of 1948–1953 gradually give way to a more nocturnal, introspective approach, saturated with networks. Pigalle becomes a key motif—not as a realistic place, but as an organism of lines, neon lights and fragmented façades.

Pigalle at Night I inaugurates this turn. Here the artist explores a luminous drama: contrasts of incandescent red and deep blue, vibrating verticals, and figures only suggested within the architectural density.

Formal / stylistic description

The composition is extremely constructed, organised around a central oblique plane, like a pierced and reflective façade. The colours—intense yet limited—produce an almost kinetic optical effect: alternations of green windows, red blocks and cobalt-blue zones.

Brushwork is nervous and rapid, but held within a strict network of guiding lines. Numerous diagonals recreate an internal urban movement—circulation, shop-sign lights, and the shadows of passers-by.

The human figure is reduced to clues: truncated silhouettes, fragments of gestures, black masses. The city absorbs bodies. Compared to the compositions of 1953, the move into night transforms space into a breathing grid rather than a scene; light becomes matter.

Comparative analysis / related works

Pigalle at Night I is more dramatic and more fractured than Pigalle at Night II.

I: chromatic tension, diagonals, red–blue luminosity. II: verticality, inwardness, a muted palette.

The two works function as a structuring diptych, already announcing the large abstract syntheses of 1955–1956 (MP3). Resonances with the markets (MP2M 1951) remain in the fragmented treatment of crowds, transposed here into a far more spectral framework.

Justification of dating and attribution

The pictorial language, palette and internal logic of the Pigalle cycle confirm the date 1954: direct continuity with the geometricised experiments of Rue Lepic (1953), the emergence of a new luminous tension specific to this transitional moment, and technical coherence with Pigalle II.

This work marks the end of Book I, at the immediate threshold of MP3 (1955–1958). It is listed in the Michelle Philippon Catalogue (1992), titled and dated.

Provenance / exhibitions / publications

Exhibited in Basel in 1956, Galerie THOMMEN.