Technical information
- Title : Le Bicot de la Zone
- Date : 1928
- Technique : Oil on canvas
- Dimensions : 100 × 81 cm
- Location : Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (MAM)
Biographical / historical context
In 1928, Breuillaud was at the heart of the ZM period, a foundational segment of his early work. Since 1925, he had been systematically exploring the wastelands between Paris, Saint-Ouen, La Chapelle, the fortifications, and the vacant grounds of the northern Zone, observing not only places but also the communities who lived there: ragpickers, unemployed workers, fairground traders, itinerant families, day labourers—anonymous figures of ordinary hardship.
The title reprises a piece of popular vocabulary of the time. The work, however, moves far beyond social caricature: Breuillaud constructs a profound, tragic, and dignified portrait, whose monumentality—100 × 81 cm, exceptional within the ZM corpus—asserts the importance granted to this sitter. Its preservation at the Musée d’Art Moderne confirms its status as a major work of the period.
Formal / stylistic description
The sitter is shown seated, frontal, a humble body mass yet powerfully installed. The head is slightly pitched forward; the drawn face and, above all, the strikingly open eyes create an immediate dramatic intensity. The tightened mouth, the nose’s bony structure, prominent ears, and the ruddy complexion—seemingly marked by cold and fatigue—form a visage shaped by lived experience rather than anecdote.
The hands, broad and heavy, as if knotted by labour, receive particular attention: painted less as isolated anatomical elements than as landscapes of matter. The touch is thick and fierce, built in tight layers, especially in the coat and around the face, giving the painting an almost sculptural dimension. The palette tightens around coal reds, soiled browns, dark ochres, and earthy violets, whose chromatic unity reinforces an impression of density and enclosure.
The background, non-descriptive and made of greyed verticals and rubbed passages, acts like a wall: it encloses the figure rather than placing it in space. The rigid, worn dark coat and the beret shadowing the brow are treated as masses—plastic weights. A frontal, harsh light brutally strikes the face and hands, leaving the torso in a vibrating darkness: the sitter becomes an apparition, a silent witness to life in the Zone.
Comparative analysis / related works
Within ZM, Le Bicot de la Zone stands out for the scale of its format and the extreme density of its paint, heavier than in many landscapes and alley scenes of the cycle. This impasto already signals a deepening of touch at the turn into the 1930s. Psychological depth reaches a peak: the frontal view does not serve effect; it imposes an encounter, comparable in intensity to certain European Expressionist portraits while retaining a social realism specific to the Parisian context.
The painting resonates, at a distance, with the 1927 portraits on paper (Mazilia, Portrait of the Moukère): where watercolour works through transparency and sign, oil imposes mass, weight, and duration. It also forms a core with other anonymous figures of 1926–1929, and foreshadows, through its demand for presence, later portraits in which frontal confrontation becomes a structuring motif.
Justification of dating and attribution
The date 1928 is fully consistent with the sombre maturity of the ZM period: a narrowed palette, heavy paint, and an emphasis on psychological density rather than contextual description. The signature, stylistic coherence with works of 1927–1929, and its status as a painting held in a public collection confirm the attribution. No element contradicts it.
Provenance / exhibitions / publications
Collection: Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (MAM).