AB-63A-1963-008 — Untitled (1963)

Technical information

Title: Untitled
Date: 1963
Technique: Pastel
Dimensions: 41 × 33 cm
Location: Private collection

Biographical / historical context

In 1963, Breuillaud sustains two climates of research: on the one hand, works in which matter darkens and compacts; on the other, clearer, almost diaphanous images that extend the exploration of membranes and intermediary states inherited from 1962. This pastel belongs to this second strand, but it intensifies its charge by introducing, within a luminous field, dark cavities that act as centres of gravity.

The work thus sits at a point of balance: transparency is no longer purely aerial; it becomes a fragile envelope, traversed by opaque nuclei and by an internal tension already specific to the 1963 research.

Formal / stylistic description

In a vertical format, a warm yellow ground, largely reserved, envelops a large central mass with supple contours, like an upright presence. The form is built from strata and rubbings mixing bluish-greens, muted greys, earthy pinks and pale whites, with more abraded passages that let the support’s grain show through.

Two dark zones dominate: at left, a small quasi-circular cavity; at right, a broader nucleus rimmed in black, whose dark-green core seems to sink into the matter. Fine drips and vertical line reprises connect these nuclei to the surrounding field, while the edges of the form fray into coloured halos, giving the image a quality both organic and spectral.

Comparative analysis / related works

Through its economy of means and its compositional silence, the sheet differs from the red, proliferating choreographies of segment 63B; it is rather a condensed and meditative counterpoint.

It extends the logic of transitional membrane works in which the light ground acts as a medium, yet it departs from them through the insistent presence of two dark “chambers” that announce—without dramatisation—the cavities and coagulated centres the artist will develop in denser 1963 pieces.

The tension between luminous reserve and dark nuclei gives the image a hinge position within the corpus, between experimental transparency and the assertion of an internal architecture.

Justification of dating and attribution

The 1963 dating is justified by the roughness achieved in pastel, thicker and more stratified than in earlier studies, and by the establishment of a structural contrast between a light milieu and strongly accentuated black nuclei.

The “63” inscription on the support, along with the visible signature, reinforces the chronological anchoring. Attribution to André Breuillaud is consistent with his vocabulary at this date: a single organism-form, uncertain borders, superimposed colour veils and the appearance of internal cavities playing an organising role.