Grataloup’s Mysteries are plural. Of a symbolist order, they resort to an alchemy of the materials put at the service of a cosmic theme. If our approach is facilitated by the simplification of reading, it is coupled with an analysis that seeks no less to understand the meaning than to interpret these esoteric scenes.
Because the universe of Grataloup is nourished by objective visions, memories (I remember Giverny), a Edenic nostalgia, and that of the dream of a lost paradise. His series earned us sumptuous ensembles, where sand, acrylic, metal, gold or silver, combine to flamboy the color, holder of a timeless beauty. The worlds of Grataloup are those of infinity. Celestial vault, ocean, continents are delimited by impassable lines that liberate spaces in which man, and woman, reduced to small characters, are pure "spirits". Grataloup claims the medieval heritage of craftsmanship. He mastered the techniques, from the miniature to the chisel, preparing his support, applying the successive layers of paints, polished, taken up until the fleshly grasp which submerges the entire surface animated by wrinkles, blisters, light irregular reliefs, responses to the occult forces of matter. These transmutations are of the order of the sacred, as are nature and man. Having achieved the balance between the visible and the invisible, between substance and emptiness, the mind emerges. Man and the universe are reconciled in an infinite, poetic and spiritual. Lydia Harambourg (art historian) - La Gazette de Drouot - April 10, 2009