Technical information
- Title: Biomorphic Composition on an Orange Ground
- Date: c. 1955
- Technique: Oil on paper
- Dimensions: 50 × 65 cm
- Location: Private collection*
Biographical / historical context
Around 1955, Breuillaud develops on paper a group of compositions in which landscape and figure are transformed into biomorphic forms. The orange ground, treated as a unifying field, acts like an inner light: it does not describe a natural atmosphere, but establishes a visual temperature.
These works on paper allow freedom of gesture and overpainting; they often function as laboratories in which rhythms and relationships of mass are tested before being transposed to canvas.
Formal / stylistic description
The surface is dominated by a warm orange spread in a broad layer, upon which forms with closed contours are laid: mauve and violet fragments, greenish zones, and darker touches that serve as articulations. The contour lines, sometimes irregular, isolate the masses like cut-out pieces while still allowing revisions and pentimenti to show through.
The ensemble suggests presences without defining them: an elongated body, a head, a trunk, an outgrowth. The motif is not readable as a scene; it operates as an organic assembly in which each element seems to slide or float within the orange field.
The composition plays on unstable balance: heavy masses occupy the edges, while at the centre a sharper articulation (green and black touches) creates tension. This structure prevents a purely decorative reading and introduces an almost choreographic dynamic.
Comparative analysis / related works
Compared with vegetal compositions on violet grounds from the same period, this sheet favours warmth and frontality: the orange ground pulls all forms to the picture plane, while contour insists on cut-out edges. The warm–cool opposition remains, however, through the insertion of mauves, greens and greys that complexify the surface.
The biomorphic vocabulary links the work to research in which Breuillaud reduces the world to organisms and signs. It can be read as a passage between the memory of landscape (masses, horizons) and a more autonomous abstraction founded on collisions of form.
Within the corpus, the sheet forms a relevant counterpart to the large nocturnal canvases: where those are built by networks and architecture, here construction proceeds through cutting and assembling, like a painted collage.
Justification of dating and attribution
The dating c. 1955 is supported by the writing: closed contours, a unifying field, contrasted palette, and the absence of figurative anchors—characteristics consistent with the paper experiments at the MP4 turning point.
Attribution is confirmed by the manner of laying colour in broad fields, linking contour and plane, and creating a space without perspective, typical of Breuillaud’s work at this time.
Provenance / exhibitions / publications
Private collection*.
© Bruno Restout - Catalogue raisonné André Breuillaud