AB-MP4-1967-003 — Amniotic Envelope in the Night (1967)

Technical information

Title : Amniotic Envelope in the Night
Date : 1967
Technique : Oil on canvas
Dimensions : 46 × 55 cm
Location : Private collection *

Biographical / historical context

In 1967, alongside the large vertical formats, Breuillaud produces more compact works that function as experimental condensations.

This small painting belongs to the late MP4 search for closed units—membranes, world-cells, organic “sections”—in which the artist can concentrate, within a single nucleus, the mutations and tensions present in his monumental canvases.

The greater freedom after Pillement is legible in the simplification of the background: space becomes nocturnal and silent so that the central form can impose itself as an autonomous microcosm.

Formal / stylistic description

The painting is dominated by a vast oval form, like an amniotic envelope floating in a midnight-blue ground.

Within this membrane, a composite organism unfolds: a large orange-and-greenish mass, striated with dark lines, hosts ovoid eyes and mouth-like accidents or slits, so that the figure oscillates between face and body.

On the left, a smaller green, profiled silhouette seems to approach the nucleus and extend a limb, as if palpating the envelope.

The contours—clear yet unstable—accentuate a sense of compression: forms appear pressed against the oval wall, then taken up by curved extensions that link the elements to one another.

The surface, very granular, mixes rubbings and glazes; scraped areas let underlying layers show through, giving the whole a microscopic vibration between biological cartography and nocturnal apparition.

Comparative analysis / related works

This membrane-based composition connects directly to the circular vein at the end of MP4, visible in AB-MP4-1966-001 (Octopus with Silken Eyes) and AB-MP4-1966-003 (Composition for the Darkness), where the central form already functions as a closed world.

Compared with the large canvases of 1967, the work isolates a single organic event and intensifies its legibility: instead of proliferation across the entire surface, it proposes concentration—almost an observation “under a lens.”

This logic of the nucleus anticipates the developments of 1968, when circularity and matrix structures will become more systematic, while retaining here the still-fusional, ambiguous dimension specific to 1967.

Justification of dating and attribution

The 1967 dating and the attribution to Breuillaud are supported by strong stylistic coherence with late MP4 works.

The dark palette, heightened by burnt ochres and acid greens, and the presence of a structuring oval membrane, correspond to research attested at this date.

The handling of paint—rubbings, reworkings, effects of pictorial skin—aligns with works of 1966–1967, while remaining prior to the graphic purification and sharper segmentations that develop from 1968 onward.

Taken together, the formal indicators convincingly place the work in 1967, in direct continuity with the MP4 cycle.