AB-CC-1971-001 — Dream (1971)

Technical information

Title : Dream
Date : 1971
Technique : Oil on canvas
Dimensions : 33 × 41 cm
Location : Private collection

Biographical / historical context

The year 1971 marks a perceptible shift toward a darker, more sparing regime of form, often described as the CC (“Cosmic–Cellular”) period.

After the saturated expansion of 1969–1970, Breuillaud seems to slow the movement: figurative density lightens, complex membranes become rarer, and the image favors punctual apparitions—like firefly‑cells isolated in a muffled space.

Through its intimate format and suspended climate, this oil painting acts as a hinge, opening onto investigations in which light becomes the main pictorial event.

Formal / stylistic description

A deep blue‑black field occupies almost the entire surface, animated by subtle variations of petroleum blue, dark greens, and violet veils that lend the ground the quality of an inner sky or a mental ocean.

Against this night stand several punctual entities, each set within a halo: a green cell in the upper left, an orange presence lower down, a small pink form toward the bottom, and above all a large yellow‑white glow to the right, built through successive circles like a luminous breathing.

Within this dominant zone, ovoids and nuclei suggest the birth of a face or an eye, while fine stems and extensions link the figures to one another, making light circulate from point to point. An isolated red touch introduces a vivid tension and heightens the dreamlike character of the scene.

The paint surface, smoother and more atmospheric than in the oils of 1970, proceeds through glazes and micro‑traces, so that light seems to emerge slowly from the depth rather than being laid onto it.

Comparative analysis / related works

Through the individualization of entities and the structuring role of halos, the work belongs to the vicinity of the small nocturnal oils that will later develop the motif of “planetary cells”.

It stands in clear contrast to the earlier MP4 cycle: the multiplication of bodies and the complexity of membranes give way here to an economy of means, a cooled chromatic range, and a slow choreography in which space acts as a medium of appearance rather than as a field of conflict.

Justification of dating and attribution

The dating to 1971 is consistent with the stabilization of a cellular vocabulary founded on isolated halos and extremely fine filament‑like connections, as well as with the nocturnal, muted palette that differs from the incandescence of 1969–1970.

The superimposition of glazes, the construction of concentric lights, and the emergence of ocular nuclei within the halos correspond to this moment of pictorial deceleration, when presence is measured by the intensity of a glow rather than by the density of form.