AB-62A-1962-004 — Untitled (1962)

Technical information

Title: Untitled
Date: 1962
Technique: Pastel
Dimensions: 41 × 33 cm
Location: Private collection

Biographical / historical context

This 1962 work belongs to a group in which Breuillaud explores a residual figuration: the motif is no longer named, yet persists as traces—verticals, bodily imprints, or the suggestion of a presence.

Pastel, with its capacity for laying down, erasing and layering, serves a search for gradual emergence: the image is built less through drawing than through stratification and the breathing of the field.

Formal / stylistic description

No motif is explicitly identifiable; presence is suggested by a bundle of verticals and diagonals, with denser areas that may evoke organic nuclei or effaced silhouettes. The format is vertical.

The palette is warm and luminous—dominant yellows and ochres, modulated by whites and beiges—punctuated by blue-green and bluish-grey passages, small violet concentrations and a few orange accents.

Contrast is low to moderate; the image is defined more by density of matter and shifts of transparency than by strong value oppositions. A unified, non-perspectival field is organised by a more structured central zone (verticals/diagonals), while the periphery remains diffuse and atmospheric.

Pastel is worked through rubbings, highlights and erasures, with granular areas and accumulations, crossed by fine linear scratches or tracings. The sheet functions as a luminous field in which forms attempt to appear and then dissolve; cold blue-green veins set up internal vertical axes, while darker violet/blue spots act as “nuclei” that keep the image from evaporating.

Comparative analysis / related works

It continues the 1962 pastels in which the figure becomes trace: light ground, a fine linear network, zones of organic density, and a composition without depth.

Here the dominant luminosity is more homogeneous and the structure more discreet: the work approaches a state study, balanced by a few dark nuclei and a very light linear mesh.

Justification of dating and attribution

The 1962 dating is consistent with: (1) the reduction of the motif to traces and nuclei, (2) a clear, quasi-monochrome field, (3) a fine linear armature, and (4) the logic of superimpositions/erasures characteristic of investigative pastel work.