AB-CCL-1976-001 — Voluptuous Round (1976)

Technical information

Title : Voluptuous Round
Date : 1976
Technique : Oil on canvas
Dimensions : 73 × 100 cm
Location : Unknown

Biographical / historical context

In 1976, Breuillaud deepens one of the most fully asserted phases of the CCL period: the body in mutation becomes a symbolic language, and desire is transmuted into dynamic organisation. After the blue membranes (1971–1973) and the vibratory phantasmagorias of 1974–1975, the year 1976 introduces a stabilisation: fleshly forms in rotation, living circles, body-cores orbiting around an imagined gravitational centre.

Voluptuous Round inaugurates this motif of the round: sensuality is no longer described as a scene, but integrated into an intimate cosmic logic, where the organic operates as movement. The work thus appears as a pivotal piece within the 1976 cycle, transforming the figure into a planet-structure—a readable, appeased fleshly vortex.

Formal / stylistic description

The composition is built on an annular twist: segments of bodies coil and turn around a central axis, creating an impression of continuous rotation. The movement is centripetal, like an inner gravitation; each limb seems to pull the next, so that the whole reads as a single looping form rather than as distinct figures.

The warm palette—honey yellow, pinkish ochre, muted gold—gives the scene a gentle incandescence, far removed from the violent reds of 1974 and the nocturnal blues. Bodies are fragmented without being destroyed: hips, breasts, heads and torsos remain legible, yet are integrated into the weave of the round, fused through successive contacts. This coherent fragmentation is a marker of 1976, when anatomy is put at the service of rhythm.

At the centre, an eye acts as an attracting nucleus: a gaze, an organ of desire, but also a formal pivot that magnetises the rotation. The handling favours light glazes and a supple matter, calmer than the dark entanglements of 1975, reinforcing the sensation of a voluptuous whirl rather than a struggle.

Comparative analysis / related works

Compared with 1975, the work marks a change in atmosphere: the entanglements were darker, more vibratory, as if exhausted; here the matter brightens and is ordered into a cycle. This round announces direct developments—Voluptuous Round II (1976), the bodily spirals of 1977, and the centripetal movements of 1978—in which circular motion becomes a structuring principle.

The difference with the blue period (1971–1973) is clear: one moves from a liquid, membranous cosmos to a carnal cosmos, where anatomy—even fragmented—again becomes the motor of the inner world. The logic of the central eye, already present in places in earlier years, stabilises here as the composition’s centre of gravity.

Justification of dating and attribution

The 1976 dating is fully coherent: an ochre-golden palette characteristic of the mid-1970s, a circular structure typical of the years 1976–1978, and a non-destructive fragmentation of bodies that distinguishes this phase from the blue membrane period (post-1972) and from the saturated reds (post-1974). Attribution is confirmed by the central ocular vocabulary, the way anatomy is fused into rhythm, and the light glazing.

The work is reproduced, titled and dated in the Michelle Philippon catalogue (1992), which consolidates both the dating and its integration within the series.

Provenance / exhibitions / publications

Vence, the artist’s studio (according to the provided record).

Canvas signed lower left (described as clear and consistent).

Reproduced in the Michelle Philippon catalogue (1992).