AB-63A-1963-009 — Rupestrian (1963)

Technical information

Title: Rupestrian
Date: 1963
Technique: Pastel
Dimensions: 48 × 63 cm
Location: Private collection

Biographical / historical context

In 1963, while Breuillaud continues his organic experiments and membrane systems, he occasionally develops a rarer “parietal” vein, as if the image were forming on a wall: traces, imprints, effacements, silhouettes reduced to essentials.

Rupestrian belongs to this research, where the artist brings his inner vocabulary into dialogue with a memory of origins—without illustration—through animal and human forms treated as signs.

The scene remains suspended on the threshold between narrative and the formless, as if it were staging a primitive theatre on a wall of matter.

Formal / stylistic description

The largely horizontal composition unfolds on a pale ground of warm greys and light greens, worked in rubbings and vertical striations that evoke the erosion of a stone-like surface.

Within this space, several animal silhouettes stand out: a large dark horse on the right, and smaller equine or cervid forms in brown-red tones, arranged from centre to right like a herd in motion.

On the left, a bent human figure dressed in blue introduces a melancholy counterpoint; it seems to watch over, guide, or simply accompany these presences.

Across the whole sheet, a network of white lines, drips and fine incisions circulates, linking the forms and keeping the image in a regime of trace rather than descriptive contour.

Comparative analysis / related works

This sheet occupies a singular place within the 1963 corpus: it retains the structuring network typical of the year’s organic research, while assuming a more legible, almost narrative iconography—exceptional at this date.

Compared with compositions centred on a single form or on compact masses, Rupestrian opens like a frieze, where figures emerge and then dissolve back into the material of the ground.

It can be read as a hinge between organic abstraction and a figuration reduced to imprint—foreshadowing later developments in which memory, trace and internal cartography become major stakes.

Justification of dating and attribution

The 1963 dating is supported by the pastel handling, both soft and rough, and by the association of a “wall” ground with a fine-line network that organises space without rigidifying it.

The “63” numbering inscribed on the support, as well as the visible signature, confirms the chronological anchoring.

Attribution to André Breuillaud is supported by stylistic coherence: simplified silhouettes as apparitions, a process of effacement and reworking, and the primacy of internal circulation over descriptive intention.