An early Cubist painter, Valmier made a significant break with his mode of representation in the early 1930s, turning to abstraction. From the still figurative and rigorously angular geometry of the previous years, he now gave way to curved and serpentine forms of an almost organic appearance.
His art adopted a theory that was closely related to the Abstraction-Création group, founded in 1931, of which he quickly became a director in 1932 until its dissolution in 1936: ‘to rediscover the word and creative freedom, while renouncing the representation of the object’. Thus, the subject of painting was no longer found in a reality external to man but in a universal spirit that dominated him.
In Cahier n°2 of the journal Abstraction-Création, Valmier wrote:
‘Whether palpable things or removable atoms, everything forms one great family, since the divine penetrates everything. Time and space are measured by the spirit, and the spirit cannot conceive of a body isolated from the universe ... There is only one goal, but there are many ways of achieving this goal, which is unity.'

Our gouache, executed in 1932, is resolutely abstract. Valmier abandoned any reference or allusion to figurative reality. 
He was inspired by the recent discovery of microscopic photography, which was invading both scientific and art journals. The content of these new and mysterious images, surrounded by filaments, carried an innovative and poetic charge for the artist, and was a manifesto of modernity for its time.
Composition abstraite demonstrates the artist's great technical mastery and inventive use of form. The coloured planes, sometimes gradated, take on satin sheen, creating a relief effect. The result is a sensitive, harmonious harmony. 

For each canvas, Valmier began by painting several gouaches, each version a work in itself.