Psychic Space (1969)

Technical information

Title : Psychic Space
Date : 1969
Technique : Oil on isorel (hardboard)
Dimensions : 33 × 41 cm
Location : Private collection

Biographical / historical context

Executed in 1969, this work belongs to a phase in which Breuillaud definitively turns away from observation of the real in favor of mental configurations: bodies reduced to masses, biomorphic presences, interior scenes in which the figure metamorphoses rather than describes itself.

The choice of isorel, a rigid support, favors a denser writing and a taut surface. In this context, the artist works through superimpositions and reworkings, constructing a space without perspectival depth but rich in thicknesses and chromatic shocks.

Formal / stylistic description

The horizontal composition reads as a mêlée of light forms against a dark, nuanced ground. Ivory volumes, modeled with bluish and gray passages, emerge and interlock, suggesting heads, torsos, or masks hollowed by orbits and cavities. Contours remain softened, as if the figures were caught in a shared substance.

The painting proceeds by stratification: an absorbing brown-black and violet ground receives more saturated red-orange zones that act as focal points of tension. Over this, the pale forms thicken in places, while other passages are rubbed and veiled, producing effects of appearance and erasure.

A network of fine lines traverses the surface, linking the masses like veins or scars. These tracings—at times almost scratched in—establish an internal circulation and prevent the composition from freezing into blocks. The whole gives the impression of a “psychic space”: a compact scene without stable hierarchy, in which the figure persists in a state of fragment and metamorphosis.

Comparative analysis / related works

The work converses with the graphic research of early-1960s pastels (AB-62A-1962-003 and AB-62A-1962-004) through the presence of schematic characters and fluid contours, while pushing further the density of matter and the ambiguity of the figure—now “incarnated” through the paint.

It also anticipates certain atmospheres of the 1970s, when biomorphic presences detach from a dark ground while remaining embedded in a colored penumbra. Compared to later works where the silhouette isolates itself, the 1969 piece remains compact and enveloped: the figure is still conceived as aggregate and coalescence.

Justification of dating and attribution

The “69” dating on the front provides the principal argument. It is supported by the plastic vocabulary: interlocked biomorphic forms, a dark palette animated by reds and ivory lights, and the presence of a network of fine lines that structures the space without describing it.

Attribution to Breuillaud is confirmed by the typology of masks and bodily fragments, by the alternation of erasures and reworkings, and by an economy of signs that keeps the figure in an in-between state—characteristic of his late language around 1969–1970.

Provenance / exhibitions / publications

Private collection.