AB-MP4-1966-009 — Cosmic I (1966)

Technical information

Title : Cosmic I
Date : 1966
Technique : Pen and India ink on paper
Dimensions : 65 × 50 cm
Location : Unknown

Biographical / historical context

In 1966, alongside the great MP4 canvases, Breuillaud develops an intense graphic activity that is not merely preparatory: these drawings form an autonomous laboratory in which the artist clarifies the structures of his organic universe. Cosmic I belongs to this moment of creative density, when painting and drawing answer one another. Here the line makes it possible to order filiations, test balances of mass, and explore networks of images before their transposition into colour and material.

Its reproduction in the Pillement Catalogue (1967) places the work at the heart of the MP4 sequence. One recognizes the desire to map a “world-matrix”: a thought of continuous transformation, formulated as a system, at the precise moment when the great compositions of 1966 become monumental.

Formal / stylistic description

With pen and ink, Breuillaud composes a constellation of extreme density, built around a vertical axis that evokes at once a totem, a genealogical tree, and an organic column. Large nude silhouettes, with ample gestures, are set in reserve amid a profusion of vignettes, internal frames, and secondary scenes. Masks, profiles, body fragments, and small inverted or upturned figures lodge in the interstices, as if each form contained another form, and each scene the trace of a smaller scene.

The drawing works through superimpositions and palimpsests: sheets seem to stack up, planes overlap, without any stable hierarchy imposing itself. Very tight hatchings sculpt volumes as much as they saturate the ground, giving the impression of a mental membrane in effervescence. This absence of a dominant orientation, combined with the entanglement of motifs, produces the effect of a world in gestation, where narrative fragments break up and redistribute themselves within a continuous network.

Comparative analysis / related works

Cosmic I forms a conceptual diptych with Cosmic II (AB-MP4-1966-010). The first privileges a verticalized, totemic structure, while the second organizes a more horizontal, layered space, like a topography. Together, they propose two modes of mapping the same universe: one by axis, the other by spread.

In relation to the great MP4 canvases of 1966, this drawing appears as a framework: motifs that will recur in the colour compositions—juxtaposed masks, inverted bodies, clusters of small figures, and nested scenes—are here present as a total schema. The link with the HSPap works of 1965 is legible in the cellular proliferation; however, Cosmic I pushes this saturation toward a more systemic organization, closer to a cosmological inventory.

Justification of dating and attribution

The dating to 1966 is supported by its reproduction in the Pillement Catalogue (1967) and by stylistic characteristics specific to MP4 drawings of this period: density of the continuous line, narrative overload, and a strongly organized structure despite the apparent profusion. The iconographic and compositional kinship with the great contemporary canvases—particularly those centred on the matrix and on masks—places Cosmic I within the same moment of elaboration and supports its attribution to André Breuillaud.

Provenance / exhibitions / publications

Reproduced in the Pillement Catalogue (1967), drawings section.