AB-CC-1971-004 — Magma Ascent (1971)

Technical information

Title : Magma Ascent
Date : 1971
Technique : Oil on canvas
Dimensions : 162 × 115 cm
Location : Private collection

Biographical / historical context

In 1971, Breuillaud gradually transforms the membranes and organic proliferations inherited from MP4 into more vertical, incandescent structures, marking the entry into the CC cycle. By its large scale, Magma Ascent asserts this shift: matter is no longer merely a medium of fusion; it becomes a column, a thrust, a rising force. Whereas some contemporary canvases insist on fall or engulfment, this one reverses the flow and stages an inner propulsion, as if the paint itself were trying to leave the ground through a continuous effort of formation and tearing away.

Formal / stylistic description

A vast red‑orange field acts as a thermal matrix for a central column where milky yellows, acidic greens and ochres interlace through glazes and reworkings. Within this vertical vortex, figures are born and dissolve: elongated silhouettes, globular heads, limbs stretched like jets of lava, suspended embryos, bodies reduced to filaments. The surface draws no clear line between foreground and background; everything interpenetrates, as though several times—birth, metamorphosis, ascent, erasure—coexisted within the same thrust. At the base and in certain counter‑forms appear darker, almost charcoal presences, counterbalancing the central light and reinforcing the sense of resistance from an older world. Near the top, a broad spherical form and isolated heads heighten the cosmic‑infernal character of this rise, poised between eruption and apparition.

Comparative analysis / related works

The work extends the 1971 investigations into matricial red, yet it is distinguished by the radical vertical axis and by the density of figures caught in a single ascending movement. Compared with more “tapestry‑like” compositions where proliferation spreads across the whole surface, the dynamic here concentrates into a funnel, giving the canvas an almost cosmic column structure. The dark figures set in counter‑field, with their green‑blue accents, foreshadow the hot/cold tensions that will fully develop in early‑1970s CC works, while the monumentality of the device anticipates the large compositions of 1972–1974.

Justification of dating and attribution

The 1971 dating is consistent with the palette and handling: a dominance of red‑ochre crossed by acidic greens, filamentous, distended silhouettes, the disappearance of the circular membranes typical of the final MP4 years, and the presence of dark figures playing the role of counter‑structure. The strongly asserted, column‑like ascent corresponds to the precise moment when hot matter still serves as a matrix but space begins to verticalize, before more overtly cosmic devices take hold after 1972. These elements confirm the attribution to 1971.