Exhibition showing Fabienne Verdier's stained glass works opens at the Camille Claudel museum

The Camille Claudel museum in Nogent-sur-Seine, an hour by train from Paris, is presenting an exhibition of stained glass by Fabienne Verdier, which originated through a commission to create new windows for the town’s church in 2016.

Verdier was inspired by the technique of yellow and silver grisaille, which made stained-glass windows from the Aube region famous during the Renaissance. This technique was used to underline and highlight details: hair, angel wings, halos, the figuration of light. For this commission, Fabienne Verdier collaborated with master glassmaker Flavie Serrière-Vincent-Petit to adapt this technique to her practice as a painter. 

The exhibition showcases the stained glass windows from the Saint-Laurent church and the workings of the two artists, alongside a set of glass tools, films and photographs documenting the collaboration. A variant of the glass windows, not retained for the choir of the church, will also be presented in a gallery space in the park of the former Dubois-Boucher museum.

The works on glass will be displayed alongside other pieces by Fabienne Verdier, showing the connection with her painting practice. Verdier and Serrière-Vincent-Petit have also produced a series of paintings on glass, ‘Topographies imaginaires’, combining the two practices, which will be exhibited to the public for the first time.

In addition, a new stained glass window has been created by the two artists for the staircase of the museum, inspired by the swirling movement of Camille Claudel’s ‘La Valse’ (1889-1905) that is on permanent display in one of the galleries. 

Fabienne Verdier (b. 1962, Paris, France) is an abstract painter who explores the dynamism of forces in nature, movement and immobility by drawing on her intimate knowledge of techniques and traditions of both Western and Eastern art. Verdier paints vertically in ink, standing directly on her stretchers, using giant brushes and tools of her own invention suspended from the studio ceiling. Her work combines Eastern aspects of unity, spontaneity and asceticism with the line, action and expression of Western painting.