AB-61A-1961-001 — Elementary Particles (c. 1961)

Technical information

Title: Elementary Particles
Date: c. 1961
Technique: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 54 × 65 cm
Location: Private collection *

Biographical / historical context

1961 marks a major turning point for Breuillaud within the Plastic Mutation: a gradual break with the still mosaic-like structures of MP2 (1955–1958) and an entry into the proto-cosmic imagery characteristic of the very beginning of MP3.

It is also a moment when the artist experiments with a new, fragmented gesture, shaped by fraying edges and zones of luminous contraction. According to the CSV, this work is a “first filamentary painting”, bearing witness to a decisive aesthetic and conceptual shift: from a still terrestrial matter toward a quasi-microscopic imagery, resonating with the scientific and cosmological preoccupations of the period.

Formal / stylistic description

Centred on an ovoid or membranous form, the composition is structured by a tight network of light filaments—beiges, pinks and yellows—branching across a dark green-blue ground.

Areas of accumulation evoke nuclei, cells or energetic pockets, while the dark interstices create an impression of deep space, almost interstellar. The touch is fine, at times scraped; light seems to arise from within the masses rather than from external modelling.

The surface reveals strata of shadow and transparency, giving the whole an internal dynamism akin to living matter in expansion. The absence of a firm contour—replaced by fibrillar continuities—forms the signature of this very specific moment at the start of the 1960s.

Comparative analysis / related works

The work stands at the hinge between the last MP2 paintings—still geological, with opaque, segmented networks—and the first proto-cosmic canvases of 1961–1962, where matter appears to dissolve into cellular combinations and particulate phenomena.

It directly anticipates the compositions of 1961–1963 characterised by soft membranes, fragmentation into nuclear zones, and a more organic internal dynamic than a tectonic one. Through its affirmed filamentary character, it belongs to the works in which Breuillaud explores the micro-organic as much as the macro-cosmic, preparing the future “energy fields” of MP3.

Justification of dating and attribution

The dating c. 1961 is consistent with the still emerging filamentary vocabulary (not yet systematised), the dark palette with internal brightenings typical of the first MP2 → MP3 transition trials, the CSV note explicitly indicating a 1961 rupture, and structures less dense than those observed from 1962–1963 onward.

These criteria fully justify its placement at the very beginning of the MP3 sequence.