AB-MP4-1966-004 — Behind the Curtain of the Night (1966)

Technical information

Title : Behind the Curtain of the Night
Date : 1966
Technique : Oil on canvas
Dimensions : 38 × 46 cm
Location : Unknown

Biographical / historical context

In 1966, André Breuillaud deepens the MP4 phase, a pivotal moment in which the work explores zones of opacity and the deep chambers of the formal unconscious.

Alongside incandescent compositions and large polyp-like masses, he develops a nocturnal chiaroscuro ensemble where light seems to surge from within the figures themselves.

Behind the Curtain of the Night belongs to this search for an “inner theatre.” The painting stages the appearance and disappearance of bodies in a space deprived of any identifiable light source, as if visibility were decided within matter itself. It is less a study than an experiment in seeing: testing the possibility of figuration in a world of vibrating shadow.

Formal / stylistic description

The composition is built around a central bulbous form—clear and dense—that functions as a luminous heart. This mass, at once stony and milky, stands out against a deep black-grey ground whose texture feels velvety, at times blurred, like a night held in suspension.

Around this nucleus, several figures unfold and establish a dramatic network. To the left, a group of silhouettes with raised arms and whitened torsos reactivates the memory of earlier membranes while hardening it into a heavier matter.

To the right, a vertical figure in tension presents a dark mask—or nocturnal object—an intense condensation of opacity held up by the hand. Below, an inverted body, partly dissolved, serves as a pivot for the whole’s spiral movement.

Off-centre gazes heighten the oneiric disorientation, while the inner light emitted by the bodies struggles against the ground’s gravity.

Comparative analysis / related works

By its format, palette, and principle of emergence, the work enters into immediate dialogue with Composition for the Darkness, sharing the same monochrome economy. Here, however, the staging is more theatrical: figures interact and answer one another, and the composition gains in dynamism.

Within the MP4 corpus, the painting condenses in miniature ideas that will be amplified in the large syntheses of 1966: a central heart, a tentacular organization of bodies, and the tension between white apparition and matricial ground.

The MP3 vocabulary is transformed: membrane becomes rock; transparency becomes resistance; dream turns into night.

Justification of dating and attribution

The dating to 1966 is secured by the inscription “66” visible on the work and by its stylistic coherence with early MP4: floating bodies, inner light, sculpted chiaroscuro, and matter worked through rubbing and deposition.

The attribution to Breuillaud is confirmed by the concordance of these traits with the documented corpus and by the work’s presence in the Pillement catalogue (1967).

Provenance / exhibitions / publications

Reproduced in the Pillement catalogue, 1967.