Technical information
- Title : Figure in Transition
- Date : 1974
- Technique : Oil on canvas
- Dimensions : 59 × 72 cm
- Location : Private collection
Biographical / historical context
In 1974, Breuillaud alternates large, blue-saturated compositions with clearer, more airy canvases in which drawing regains the upper hand. Figure in Transition bears witness to this moment of breathing space: the artist privileges an almost bare field—like a laboratory stage—where a handful of forms is enough to set an inner drama in motion.
Painted in Vence, the work forms part of a sustained investigation into metamorphosis: the being is never fixed; it oscillates between body, animality, and sign. The “transition” announced by the title is legible as much in the forms as in the handling, which combines transparencies, reserves, and taut, nervous lines.
Formal / stylistic description
Against a luminous, lightly worked ground, the main shapes stand out: on the left, a dark presence whose eye becomes a focal point; above, a large arched form—almost avian or vegetal—overhangs a paler figure. The human body appears only in fragments and contortions, as if caught in the act of transforming, tipping from one state into another. Contours are often set down in line, then taken up again in thin veils of colour that allow the canvas to breathe.
The palette is gentler than in the nocturnes: light ochres, diluted blues, greenish touches, with a few darker accents that anchor the composition. The graphic gesture, very present, suggests shifts and slippages and installs a sense of duration: one has the impression of witnessing a figure becoming something else, rather than a character posed within a décor.
Comparative analysis / related works
This canvas forms a pendant to the “blue scenes” of 1974: instead of a world saturated with apparitions, Breuillaud opts here for economy and ellipsis, entrusting drawing with the charge of unease. Yet the same signs recur—the isolated eye, the hybrid form between human and animal, and the dramaturgy of a space without any certain ground.
Figure in Transition also belongs to the group of works in which Breuillaud clarifies the pictorial field in order to isolate a motif more sharply. It illuminates the period’s inner logic: profusion and density are not an end in themselves but one option among others, and the artist knows how to reduce the space so as to intensify the quality of apparition.
Justification of dating and attribution
The 1974 dating is consistent with the alternation—attested across the œuvre—between blue nocturnes and brighter, more open compositions. The forms, both drawn and softly fused, correspond to a moment when Breuillaud stabilises his vocabulary while testing it through varied pictorial set-ups; the format (59 × 72 cm) aligns with these more concentrated study canvases.
The attribution to André Breuillaud is supported by the signature and by highly characteristic traits: the eye-as-sign, supple anatomies, incised contours, and the feeling of a mental theatre in which the figure undergoes metamorphosis. The coherence of touch and drawing with other works from 1974 further reinforces this attribution.
Provenance / exhibitions / publications
Vence. Private collection.
© Bruno Restout — Catalogue raisonné André Breuillaud