Technical sheet
- Title: Genesis Operator
- Date: 1971
- Technique: Oil on canvas (HST)
- Dimensions: 1971
- Location: Private collection
Biographical / historical context
In 1971, Breuillaud explores a new field within the CC period: the fabrication of the living, the bringing-to-birth, the assembly of semi-human forms in a suspended material space.
He temporarily leaves the blazing red magmas (CC-1971-002, 003, 004) to enter a paler zone—milky, beige-yellow—where genesis unfolds in an inner, almost uterine light.
Genesis Operator belongs to this extremely specific moment: a meditation on the hand that forms, on the being that shapes being, on the very materiality of organic appearance.
A decisive shift is at work: the infernal violence of the great vertical compositions gives way to a micro-operative scene, where everything is adjustment, origin, and emergence.
Formal / stylistic description
1. A yellow-ochre space, radiant, without depth
The background is a bath of liquid yellow-ochre, little structured, acting as an incubation chamber.
No horizon, no ground, no sky: pure matrix, a surface of germination.
2. The central group: an operation of the living
At the centre, several membranous figures—both human and animal—are engaged in an operative act:
- a white globular-headed figure, almost foetal,
- a dark turquoise entity, a gestural pivot, that manipulates, separates, pinches, and shapes,
- a folded flesh-like ensemble to the right, made of interlaced bodies: legs, arms, torsos fused together.
These beings are neither threatening nor peaceful: they are absorbed in their task—in a genesis gesture that is almost technical.
3. The operative gesture
The turquoise hand/form at the centre constitutes the true operator:
- it takes,
- it separates,
- it assembles,
- it extracts a small being,
- it introduces a flow of matter into another body.
This ‘operative gesture’ is anatomical yet ritual—an act of primitive creation.
4. Bodies in transformation
Silhouettes are transitional:
- soft membranes,
- limbs dissolving,
- torsos in formation,
- visible internal flows,
- embedded embryonic presences.
A passage between non-being and being, between form and beginning.
5. Colours and transparencies
An exceptional palette within 1971: very soft velvety yellows, acid greens, deep turquoise touches, and tenuous contours traced in ink or pencil—trembling, nearly erased.
Unlike the fused reds of CC-1971-002/003/004, this canvas establishes a luminous, suspended, almost amniotic atmosphere.
Comparative analysis / related corpus
Direct proximity
Certain pastels of 1970 (internal structures, floating forms) anticipate this gentle genesis.
The large-format CC works of 1971 (Descent into Hell, Ascent of the Magma) share the theme of emergence but are treated in a radically different way.
Specificities
A rare 1971 work to develop a micro-organic operative scene; a calmer atmosphere than the contemporary red magmas; an exploration of internal body-making scarcely visible elsewhere; and supple, translucent torsions closer to pastel than to the year’s other oils.
Dating justification
Several markers consolidate the 1971 dating:
- a yellow-green palette specific to a micro-moment in 1971,
- membranous figures issued from late MP4 but reoriented toward a CC system,
- the central role of an acting operator figure,
- format and matter coherent with the year’s genetic-transition works.
The dating is strongly supported.
Provenance / exhibitions / publications
Working title: Genesis Operator (not titled by the artist).
Image data
- Paint: very thin oils in milky superimposed layers
- Method: successive transparencies
- Contours: soft, fluctuating line; sometimes erased
- Construction: centred operative scene