AB-CCL-1980-001 — Maternity (1980)

Technical information

Title : Maternity
Date : 1980
Technique : Oil on paper (HSPap)
Dimensions : 65 × 50 cm
Location : Unknown

Biographical / historical context

In 1980, at the close of the Vence period, Breuillaud brings to an end a long organic, fusion-driven cycle begun in earlier decades. After the incandescent tensions of the late 1970s, his work moves toward a quiet simplification: bodies settle, dramaturgy recedes, and fusion takes on the character of contemplation.

Maternity belongs to this terminal phase as a resolution: the joining of fleshly forms is no longer erotic or cosmic, but primal and protective. The motif of the membrane—so central to Breuillaud—is here transposed into the maternal gesture, offering an image of pacified unity.

The work thus proposes a symbolic closure of the cycle: union is no longer enacted in vertigo, but in a primordial tenderness, where the breath of the composition seems to pause and gather itself.

Formal / stylistic description

The composition appears as a compact, almost monolithic block, in which the maternal body encloses the child within a single mass. The adult figure, with powerful rounded limbs, folds around the child lodged at the centre, whose presence is indicated by a simplified face and by arms and hands drawn back against the belly.

Working on paper favours an exceptionally soft modelling. Contours are lightly stated; volumes emerge from a pearly grey and a slightly darker halo that surrounds the form like a protective mist. Faces, deliberately unindividualized, are reduced to a few markers, reinforcing the sense of a universal scene rather than a portrait.

The mother’s hands—broad and enveloping—structure the reading: they cover, hold, and bind. Heavy feet and legs anchor the composition at the bottom, while filament-like strands of hair introduce a fine vibration within the overall calm.

Comparative analysis / related works

By its austerity and greyscale range, Maternity is close to the works on paper of 1979–1980, in which Breuillaud reduces the scene to a closed entity. Its formal kinship with The Couple’s Eye lies in the logic of enclosure and in the construction of an ovoid mass.

Set beside the more turbulent rounds and fusions of 1976–1979, the work marks a shift: circularity remains, but it is no longer dynamic or dramatic. It becomes calm, almost sculptural, and the theme of fusion acquires a protective dimension.

This image may also be read as an outcome: a pacification of gestures and motifs, in which organic experimentation gathers itself into an elemental, human form.

Justification of dating and attribution

The extreme simplification of the scene, the withdrawal of chromatic colour, and the softened modelling are characteristic of the very last works of the Vence period, when Breuillaud favours monochrome atmospheres and an almost spectral presence of forms.

The inscription “Vence 80” visible on the work provides direct evidence for the dating.

The coherence of this late morphology—rounded volumes, dissolved contours, symbolic hands, and minimally individualized faces—supports the attribution to André Breuillaud and its place within the final corpus of the CCL cycle.

Provenance / exhibitions / publications

Private collection; mentioned in documents connected with Michelle Philippon.

Signed lower left; annotation “Vence 80” at right.

Probably executed in the artist’s very last active years.