“The small format of most of my cosmogrammes is meant to emphasize a precious, or refined quality; it is said that precious things come in small packages.” - Louise Janin
Louise Janin encountered marbling at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs, where she was exhibiting shortly after her show at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune. Around the same time, her meeting with František Kupka marked a shift toward nonfigurative forms. Beginning in the 1920s, she experimented with marbling, developing her own technique through the use of liquids, pigments, and paper, informed by an interest in physical phenomena such as capillarity.
After the Second World War, this research led to the Cosmogrammes, a series produced through controlled reactions of fluid materials applied directly to the surface. Drawing on sources ranging from marbled book covers to Surrealist decalcomania and Persian miniatures, these works form dense, small-scale compositions where shifting forms suggest plants, landscapes, and imagined structures, conceived as a bridge between nature and cosmos.
