In 1966, Grataloup was Laureate of the Institut de France for Casa Velázquez in Madrid. He left France for Madrid, where he stayed for two years with Agneta.

These years will be decisive for the painter. It is in Spain that he will create a new form of painting, in total rupture with that taught by the Ecole des Beaux-Arts' teachers who only then recognized the «classical» forms of painting with painters like Renoir, Bonnard or de Staël...

"From a pictorial point of view, this period was the most inventive of my life. In Paris, I was stopped by the conceptual."