In 1978, following on from the Awakening of the Plant World series, GRATALOUP embarked on a new body of work which he simply entitled Végétal.

The works in this series take as their starting point frottages made directly from plant forms. The resulting imprint, however, is no longer preserved in its entirety. GRATALOUP cuts the frottage into small 7 × 7 cm squares, which he then reassembles and mounts onto canvas according to a carefully constructed arrangement. The original image is thus fragmented and recomposed, like a puzzle.

Through this process, GRATALOUP introduces a new stage between the imprint of nature and the completed work. Frottage first records the structure of the plant directly—its veins, rhythms and material irregularities—before the artist deconstructs the imprint and reorganizes it into a new composition.

The geometric regularity of the square is thus brought into tension with the organic character of the motif. The natural continuity of the plant gives way to a discontinuous surface structured by repetition and assemblage. Some forms continue from one square to another, while others are interrupted or displaced, gradually distancing the plant motif from any descriptive representation.

This fragmentation can be understood as a further development in GRATALOUP’s exploration of the matrix, the imprint and the transformation of reality. Nature provides the raw material for the image, but this material is subsequently subjected to a process of decomposition and reconstruction. The plant is no longer merely represented, nor simply revealed through its imprint: it becomes a vocabulary of forms that the artist can fragment, displace and recompose.

With the Végétal series, GRATALOUP thus brings together two principles that would continue to resonate throughout his work: the organic order of nature and the constructed order of geometry.