Technical information
- Title : Diaphanous Figures
- Date : 1969
- Technique : Pastel
- Dimensions : 25 × 33 cm
- Location : Private collection *
Biographical / historical context
In 1969, Breuillaud’s language becomes lighter: after the matrix-like density of 1966–1967, figures detach from an atmospheric ground and take on the value of signs, as if the artist were testing a handwriting of the body in space. Pastel—a quick medium well suited to diffuse vibrations—supports this inflection by enabling more aerial, almost musical apparitions.
The sheet belongs to this transitional moment when the scene is no longer a closed magma, but an open theatre: a pale ground, a nocturnal vault, and silhouettes charged with gesture, poised between dance and rite.
Formal / stylistic description
The drawing brings together three main figures with white, diaphanous bodies, edged with light blue and green highlights. They are distributed across a band of pale ochre that serves as ground, while above stretches a deep blue sky, speckled and crossed by pinkish halos.
At the center, a standing silhouette moves its arms, caught mid-step; an orange disc placed on the head zone—or just behind it—acts like a star or halo that polarizes the scene. To the left, a figure with raised hands answers with a calling gesture, while to the right a body lies almost horizontally, in a posture of abandonment or floating. The pastel is worked through rubbing and dissolution: contours fray and volumes remain deliberately unstable, so that the beings seem to emerge from a luminous mist rather than being fully embodied.
Comparative analysis / related works
This sheet belongs to Breuillaud’s 1968–1969 research, when he transforms the fusionary anthropomorphism of MP4 into more calligraphic silhouettes. The contrast between the terrestrial band and the constellated vault extends the cosmic imagination present in earlier years, but in a more pared-down form: organic narration yields to a dramaturgy of gestures and positions.
The economy of means—three bodies, a few halos, one astral disc—anticipates later developments in which figures become ritual signs, close to dance, and in which space, instead of being saturated, fully participates in the rhythm of the composition.
Justification of dating and attribution
The 1969 dating and attribution are supported first by the medium, widely used by the artist at this time to explore rapid, atmospheric configurations. The night-blue palette, the white silhouettes with turquoise highlights, and the dissolving contours correspond to the formal lightening observed after 1967: the work departs from the closed membranes and fusionary nuclei typical of 1965–1967 in favor of an open, airy space.
Finally, a handwritten “69” at the bottom of the sheet reinforces the coherence of the dating.