AB-64C-1964-007 — Maternity (1964)

Technical information

Title: Maternity
Date: 1964
Technique: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 100 × 65 cm
Location: Private collection

Biographical / historical context

The year 1964 marks a hinge in Breuillaud’s plastic mutation, when the red dramaturgies of 63B and the clearer, more structured organisms of subsequent ensembles converge toward a reintroduction of anthropomorphism.

Maternity belongs to this brief phase in which the artist more directly addresses the idea of an original presence—not as a literal scene, but as an emergence within matter.

The iconographic theme, exceptionally explicit, is transmuted by the language of membranes, thicknesses and internal networks: maternity becomes an archaeology of the nourishing body, the progressive discovery of a buried figure.

Through its dense impasto and the dark red chamber that encloses the whole, the work belongs fully to the 64C sub-cycle of “warm enclosing masses”.

Formal / stylistic description

The composition unfolds in a compact verticality: a large rounded ochre form occupies the centre and reads as an encompassing body, whose head, inclined, surfaces in the upper left.

At the heart of the structure, a lighter, slightly bluish circular zone asserts itself as a childhood nucleus—not described naturalistically, but inscribed as a luminous flesh-bubble caught within the overall architecture.

Incised lines—sometimes barely visible—suggest arms, torsos and folded limbs; nothing is closed, and limits melt into superimposed layers, as if the figure were forming and unforming at once.

The periphery, a saturated dark red, plays the role of a matricial chamber: it rings the central mass, pushes it forward and intensifies the sense of interiority.

The rough surface is worked with broad impastos, abrasions and smoothed passages where muted greens and blues emerge; the paint breathes between density and effacement.

Comparative analysis / related works

Through both theme and enveloping structure, Maternity reconnects with earlier larval figures and foetal motifs, but offers a more architectured, more telluric version.

It dialogues with the anthropoid masses of 63B—retaining their chromatic tension—while shifting the dramaturgy toward a less tragic, more containing presence.

The verticality and chamber-like organisation foreshadow, without breaking from 1964, the works of 1965 in which the human figure will be more fully enveloped by increasingly translucent membranes.

Within the 64C corpus, the canvas stands as a singular point: a rare incursion into a traditional motif, rendered inseparable from Breuillaud’s organic logic, where iconography dissolves into matter.

Justification of dating and attribution

The 1964 dating is supported by the precise accord between the peripheral red and the irradiant ochres at the centre, a combination characteristic of 64C works, as well as by the thickness of matter and the incision-and-rubbing work that develops especially in the second half of the year.

The painting occupies a transitional zone: still close to the reds of 1963 in intensity and enclosure, yet already oriented toward the more luminous masses and engulfments that prepare 1965.

Stylistic coherence, reinforced by internal corpus parallels and known documentary mentions for this period, supports a 1964 dating and confirms attribution to Breuillaud.

Provenance / exhibitions / publications

Georges Pillement Catalogue, colour plate X (1967).