AB-MP4-1955-006 — The Blue Alley (c. 1955)

Technical information

Title: The Blue Alley
Date: c. 1955
Technique: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 72 × 60 cm
Location: Location: Unknown

Biographical / historical context

In the mid-1950s, André Breuillaud intensifies his research toward an increasingly “constructed” landscape: the motif becomes rarefied, yet remains as hints of architecture, threshold and passage. This period develops a painting of structure, in which space is conceived as an assembly of planes rather than classical perspective.

The Blue Alley belongs to this impetus: the urban evocation suggested by the title serves chiefly as a pretext for orchestrating verticals, walls and counter-forms. The cool range (blues, turquoise, greens) acts as a chromatic laboratory anticipating the more architectured works of 1956.

Formal / stylistic description

The composition is dominated by a network of rectangles and vertical bars that creates the impression of a corridor or narrow street. At the centre, a lighter area functions as a breathing point: it draws the eye and organises circulation, like an opening at the end of a passage.

Colours are overlaid in slightly translucent fields, allowing revisions and pentimenti to remain visible. Deep blues structure the whole, while warmer accents (orange, muted reds) punctuate certain planes and avoid monochromy. Brushwork remains legible, giving the surface a vibration that humanises the geometry.

Comparative analysis / related works

Through its construction by interlocking planes, the work relates to other “blue” compositions of the same period, where the idea of city or architecture is filtered through a mosaic logic. The relatively ample format allows the multiplication of visual thresholds: doors, walls and pillars become pictorial rhythms.

It also mediates between two directions in the corpus: on the one hand, the still legible landscapes of the early 1950s; on the other, the stricter abstractions of 1956, where colour is reduced in favour of values and skeleton. The Blue Alley sits at a point of balance: the sensible world is no longer represented, yet remains perceptible as spatial memory.

Justification of dating and attribution

The dating c. 1955 is consistent with the dominant cool palette and with the manner of building space through large superimposed rectangular planes, typical of the transitional phase between landscape and architectured abstraction.

The signature “Breuillaud” is visible at lower right in the reproduction, and the pictorial writing (discreet contour, vibrating flats, visible reprises) corresponds to the artist’s formal vocabulary in these years.

Provenance / exhibitions / publications

Provenance: not documented to date (the work is likely preserved within a private group or derived from the studio).

Exhibitions: not recorded.

Publications: not recorded.