AB-MP1-1956-004 — The Mistral (1956)

Technical information

Title: The Mistral
Date: 1956
Technique: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 73 × 92 cm
Location: Private collection

Biographical / historical context

In Breuillaud’s corpus, 1956 marks a moment of synthesis, when the cubist-inflected vocabulary of previous years increasingly frees itself from descriptive motif. Rather than “representing” a subject, the artist seeks to translate states—breath, displacement, thrust, turbulence—through the organisation of coloured planes.

The title The Mistral refers less to a landscape than to a sensation: the dynamics of wind become a constructive principle. In this context, Breuillaud favours overall devices (ovals, whirlwinds, diagonals) capable of carrying the composition across the whole surface and unifying the canvas in a continuous movement.

Formal / stylistic description

The canvas is organised around a vast elliptical form that frames and channels the gaze. Inside it, interlocking ribbons and segments, with clearly outlined contours, compose a “mechanics” of curves and counter-curves.

The palette, dominated by a warm orange ground, is crossed by greens, ochres and violets, with transition zones where colours merge in glazes or lighter rubbings. The masses articulate through juxtapositions of planes and dark lines acting as hinges: they cut, accelerate and give the painting its rhythmic vibration. The whole evokes a circular gust, as if the pictorial matter were caught in a squall.

Comparative analysis / related works

The Mistral belongs to a sequence of movement compositions in which Breuillaud exploits motifs of rotation and the swaying of forms. Similar elliptical framing and coils can be found in works close in rhythm, such as “Russian Song” (AB-MP1-1956-002) or “Movement No. 1” (AB-MP1-1956-001), and in later researches explicitly centred on rotation (“Rotation”, AB-MP2-1957-003).

Compared with contemporary urban compositions (doors, alleys, quays), the structure here detaches from architectural reference: sensation prevails, and geometry primarily serves to inscribe movement within a continuous space.

Justification of dating and attribution

The dating 1956 is consistent with the phase of recomposition and dynamisation of planes observed in several oils of the same year (elliptical structures, driving diagonals, warm palette heightened with greens).

The work bears Breuillaud’s signature (lower right, in red), consistent with his practices in this period. Its presence in the Pillement Catalogue (1967) provides an additional documentary marker for the attribution.

Provenance / exhibitions / publications

Provenance: private collection.

Publications: reproduced in the Pillement Catalogue, 1967.