AB-MP4-1955-004 — Untitled (c. 1955)

Technical information

Title: Untitled
Date: c. 1955
Technique: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 130 × 89 cm
Location: Private collection*

Biographical / historical context

This large vertical composition, dated c. 1955, reflects a search for a figure that has become a sign. Breuillaud does not abandon the idea of the body: he passes through it, fragments it, and reconstructs it as a central presence caught within a field of coloured forces.

The work belongs to the same momentum as the nocturnal research and biomorphic compositions: a language in which analogy (figure, tree, totem) remains, but always at the very edge of abstraction.

Formal / stylistic description

The vertical format reinforces an idea of elevation. At the centre, a luminous red–orange axis organises the surface, like a column or a standing silhouette. Around it, veils of blue, green and violet overlap in broad layers, while darker lines—sometimes green, sometimes almost black—trace sinuous contours close to calligraphic drawing.

The palette opposes warm zones (reds, oranges) to cooler grounds (deep blues, turquoises), creating an internal vibration. Paint appears applied in relatively thin layers, at times leaving breathing spaces and transparencies that heighten the sense of a figure traversed by light.

More than a scene, the work proposes a state: an upright presence, condensed, as if held between two lateral planes. The curves framing the central form can be read as walls, draperies or vegetation, yet they function above all as forces that compress and energise the main axis.

Comparative analysis / related works

Compared with contemporary horizontal compositions, this canvas explores another solution: abstraction through verticalisation. The vocabulary of the arc, the luminous reserve and organic tracings remains, but it is concentrated around a single pivot—bringing the work closer to later, “totemic” research.

It can be related to the 1955 biomorphic compositions on paper by the same sinuous contours, the warm–cool opposition, and the use of the ground as an active field. Here, however, scale and monumentality lend the central sign a quasi-figural dimension.

Within the corpus, this Untitled work is a plausible step toward paintings where the figure dissolves completely: the silhouette persists, but no longer as anatomy—rather as an architecture of colour.

Justification of dating and attribution

The dating c. 1955 is supported by its stylistic coherence with the year’s research: contrasted palette, organisation around a central axis, organic contours, and the absence of direct narrative. The format and ambition correspond to a phase in which the abstract language consolidates.

Attribution raises no difficulty: the syntax of forms, the management of superimpositions, and the relationship between line and plane accord with Breuillaud’s manner in the MP4 period.

Provenance / exhibitions / publications

Private collection*.