AB-MP3-1958-001 — Untitled (1958)

Technical information

Title: Untitled
Date: 1958
Technique: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 54 × 63 cm
Location: Private collection

Biographical / historical context

In 1958, André Breuillaud continues the momentum begun the previous year: from structures still inherited from a constructive logic, he tips the composition toward a more all-over field, where painting becomes a network of internal circulations.

The blue ground, very present at this time, is no longer merely a background: it acts as an atmosphere, a mental space in which trajectories, chromatic collisions and emergent forms are inscribed. This composition bears witness to a search for balance between framework and flow, between architectural legibility and gestural energy.

Formal / stylistic description

Across a horizontal format, a deep blue—close to ultramarine—installs a coloured night, dense and vibrating. Over it, Breuillaud weaves a mesh of curved lines and arcs in reds, oranges and brunished tones, sometimes edged with green.

These tracings do not describe a single motif: they cross, overlap and restart like a nervous circulation, with variations of density that create blazing zones and others that breathe. At the centre, a column of rectangles and clearer planes (greys, mauves, softened blues) plays the role of a pivot: it stabilises the whole without interrupting the overall movement.

Material remains legible: matte layers, reprises, rubbings and highlights reveal a construction by successive additions. In places, the lines seem to turn into fragments of planes, as if the network hesitated between calligraphic writing and mosaic construction—an ambivalence that gives the painting its poetic tension.

Comparative analysis / related works

The work relates to 1957–1958 compositions in which the artist combines a “panel” armature with sinuous ribbons and circular signs. Here the network becomes more autonomous: line no longer serves only to articulate planes; it becomes the subject of the painting itself.

This orientation foreshadows later research toward more organic forms, where internal circulation—spirals, loops, overlaps—asserts itself at the expense of architectural markers.

The contrast between an “atmospheric” blue ground and warm tracings also raises a problem of non-perspectival depth: distance is achieved by intensity and overlay rather than by horizon.

Justification of dating and attribution

The dating 1958 is consistent with the palette (dark blue against saturated warms) and with the coexistence of a structuring central axis and an expanding gestural mesh, characteristic of works from this year.

The signature is not legible on the reproduction provided; attribution rests on stylistic and technical coherence (organisation of planes, handling of matter, chromatic range) and on the work’s logical place within the 1957–1959 sequence.