AB-MP4-1966-007 — The Garden of Masks (1966)

Technical information

Title : The Garden of Masks
Date : 1966
Technique : Oil on canvas
Dimensions : 130 × 162 cm
Location : Unknown

Biographical / historical context

At the heart of 1966, The Garden of Masks belongs to a phase of expansion in which Breuillaud brings the MP4 cycle to an almost encyclopedic scale. After research developed through values and tests of nocturnal density, he asserts a saturated polychromy that becomes, here, the instrument of a cosmological staging. The canvas reads like a manifesto: it condenses MP4’s major themes—hybridizations, matrix circulation, and the proliferation of mask-figures—deploying them across a vast field in which nothing remains stable.

The choice of the work as the cover image of the Pillement Catalogue (1967) attests to this value of synthesis. The painting stands at the crossroads of pictorial activity and contemporary graphic research, where Breuillaud elaborates internal “maps” of his organic world before reincarnating them in matter and colour.

Formal / stylistic description

The composition appears as an inner planetarium: an ovoid space set within a dark atmosphere, where humanoid, zoomorphic, foetal, or totemic beings proliferate. A large central form—pale and greenish, with multiple limbs—occupies the role of nucleus: a body that is both figure and matrix, drawing around it fragments of faces, dark masks, embryos, and secondary silhouettes that seem to orbit, graft themselves, or detach from its surface.

The colours—acid greens, nocturnal violets, blood reds, sulphurous yellows—are worked in a rich matter that alternates between roughness and velvet. Translucent superimpositions thicken space like an inner chamber, while a nervous, sometimes calligraphic line provisionally fixes shifting contours. Despite the profusion, coherence is maintained through a rotational dynamic and a balance of masses: the eye moves from one focus to another, carried by filaments that evoke nerves, roots, or ligaments, binding each element to the whole.

Comparative analysis / related works

The kinship with Identity of the Realms (MP4-1966-006) is immediate: the same monumental ambition and the same reflection on organic continuity. The Garden of Masks, however, shifts the issue: rather than insisting on the fusion of realms, it stages the very site of transformation, as if the canvas became the stage on which metamorphoses take place.

The drawings Cosmic I and Cosmic II (MP4-1966-009 and MP4-1966-010) illuminate the painting as conceptual frameworks: the same internal cartography, the same proliferation of micro-scenes, and the same principle of interlocking—here amplified by colour and the density of the material. In relation to MP3 (1964–1965), the work retains torsions and a foetal vein, but surpasses them in scale and symbolic intensity: mutations are no longer merely shown; they are organized around a central matrix that orders the reading.

Justification of dating and attribution

The dating to 1966 is ensured by its reproduction on the cover of the Pillement Catalogue (1967) and by its stylistic correspondence with the major contemporary MP4 canvases. The strongly luminous greens and yellows, the violet ground, and the presence of a central motif with multiple ramifications belong to a tight sequence within the year, in which Breuillaud produces his most expansive compositions. The direct continuity with Identity of the Realms and with the graphic schemes of the “Cosmic” drawings supports the attribution and clarifies the work’s context of creation.

Provenance / exhibitions / publications

Reproduced on the front cover of the Pillement Catalogue (1967).