AB-CCL-1974-002 — Imaginary Biotope (1974)

Technical information

Title : Imaginary Biotope
Date : 1974
Technique : Oil on canvas
Dimensions : 81 × 100 cm
Location : Private collection

Biographical / historical context

This “blue scene [2]” belongs to the core group of 1974 works in which Breuillaud explores a nocturnal world peopled with larval presences. In Vence, colour becomes a breathing space: blue is no longer a background but a medium in which forms are born, drift, aggregate, and dissolve.

The horizontal format (81 × 100 cm) favours a panoramic reading. Rather than narrating an episode, the canvas sets up an ecosystem of apparitions, like a cross-section through a dream: in the foreground, middle ground, and distance, figures answer one another through gestures and gazes, connected by filaments and drips.

Formal / stylistic description

Within a field of deep blues, a luminous disc asserts itself like a nocturnal sun or a star-flower, set on a vertical stem. Around it, slender silhouettes, sometimes reduced to trunks and limbs, seem to hang or rise. The drips, far from accidental, structure the surface: they become axes, curtains, lianas, giving the scene an internal verticality despite the horizontal format.

The figures bear recurring signs: isolated eyes, barely indicated mouths, bodies both human and vegetal. Chromatic transitions are finely worked, from blue to green, with lighter highlights that make certain zones radiate. The space feels humid, almost underwater, and the viewer is placed as an observer plunged into the heart of an “imaginary biotope”.

Comparative analysis / related works

The work may be compared to other large blue canvases of 1974 by its density of apparitions and its use of a luminous “star” as a poetic centre. It also extends the 1973 experiments on paper: the same taste for transparency, the same drawing that surfaces and guides the reading.

The difference lies in scale and surface discipline: the canvas allows gradients to be stretched, dark masses to be opposed to luminous reserves, and drips to become a compositional element.

Within the related corpus, the presence of a central irradiating motif and the multiplication of filiform figures mark a stage of structuring: Breuillaud moves from more compact ensembles to organised “mental landscapes”, where each apparition becomes a landmark in a depth built by strata of colour.

Justification of dating and attribution

The 1974 dating is justified by the fully installed vocabulary of the series: large blue field, filiform figures, axial luminous motif, and the use of drips as an armature. The format (81 × 100 cm) corresponds to a production on canvas of this period, in which the artist works more panoramic scenes while preserving the ambiguity between organic microcosm and nocturnal cosmos.

Attribution to André Breuillaud is supported by the signature, by morphological constants (eye-signs, hybrid bodies, suspended gestures), and by the way depth is constructed through glazes. Stylistic coherence with attested 1974 “blue scenes”, together with the indicated provenance, consolidates the identification.

Provenance / exhibitions / publications

Vence. Private collection.