Technical information
- Title : Materia Viva
- Date : 1972
- Technique : Pastel with ink highlights
- Dimensions : 25 × 33 cm
- Location : Private collection
Biographical / historical context
In 1972, Breuillaud pursues in parallel the rise of large blue compositions and a more intimate practice on small formats, where matter becomes an organism in formation. Materia Viva belongs to this second strand, described as a personal laboratory in Vence: a space of retreat that allows rapid, sensitive experiments, close to the surface’s own breathing.
The date carried in the signature places the work at the same moment as the cosmic canvases, but in a deliberately microscopic register, as if the painter were observing the prelude to the birth of the entities.
Formal / stylistic description
On a very pale, pinkish, lightly creamy ground, clouds of watery blues and milky greens settle and seem to seep into the support. At the center, a form with a voluminous head and elongated neck stands out through soft, almost vaporous modeling, while other proto-figures—reduced to eyes, mouths, or embryonic limbs—emerge from zones of diffusion.
A dark, vibrating line circulates in touches and light scratches, as if testing points of purchase in matter that is still undecided. The whole favors the impression of an amniotic substance, suspended between appearance and erasure, where color becomes one with space.
Comparative analysis / related works
This work on paper stands as a counterpoint to the monumental blue structures: where Blue Jellyfish unfolds a constituted world, Materia Viva condenses its germ and multiplies micro-events. It belongs to the line of small experimental formats of 1972 centered on larval energy and the continuity between matter and figure, tracing an implicit progression from breathing substance toward being, and then toward autonomous entity.
The suppleness of contours and the priority given to tonal transitions foreshadow, on a reduced scale, the broader networks that will stabilize in later compositions.
Justification of dating and attribution
The presence of the dated signature “72,” the pastel palette associated with the Vence experiments, and the combined use of pastel with ink highlights correspond to the procedures described for these small laboratory formats. The supple black line and the non-centered construction, founded on diffuse respiration, clearly distinguish the work from earlier periods and align it with the 1972 corpus. These elements converge toward a secure dating and attribution to André Breuillaud.
© Bruno Restout — Catalogue raisonné André Breuillaud