In this artist, the pictorial act is close to the sacred.He tries to conjure, to tame the occult forces.Its materials are those of the cosmos, the earth, the metal, the stone, the wood, the sand in which the spirit blows.
At no time does he abandon the relationship to nature, as in the face.
Grataloup’s work requires space.His previous exhibition at the Salpétrière had demonstrated this.Today, his new occupation at the Trinity Chapel continues this spiritual adherence.Large paintings are displayed, including the triptych La Danse.Impressive composition where the all restrictive abstraction is only apparent.We are facing a rich material, sensually worked in color.The painter acts according to what he sees and therefore with materials that he sees, tangible.Its double relation to reality and to the spirit that dwells in all things requires its concentration on the infinitely small.Work of illuminator and builder of a world both metaphysical and surprising proximity.A palpable world where sand, the smallest particle visible to the naked eye, is meticulously placed to cover the surface.A work with small points that makes him find the figure.He draws acrylic on the film with the tip of a pencil, sometimes incorporating fragments of photos.A figure.The unknown is complicit in science.
With the superb series dedicated to Massabielle, we are caught by a mystical breath that sweeps the canvases.From Genesis, we thus travel through the stages of a slow initiation to the monumental "Golden Tent of the Prophet" and its symbolic scale rooted in the sand whose relation to the sculpture is of perfect clarity
Other smaller works are presented at the gallery "Le Soleil sur la Place".Disappearance or Black Sun present a pictorial layer as always at Grataloup which emphasizes this relationship by hand, by trade.The gold leaf blends with the pigments in layered layers to a timeless glow that weaves close links with the icons.Time, its flow and its suspension Les Feuilles.
At Grataloup, the work is always in accord with the thought as in The Tombs.A work hardly distant from the Byzantine paintings, the treccento.We are in a painting that makes visible this impalpable in-between, between emptiness and matter, the spirit emerges.
Lydia Harambourg (art historian) - 2003