BIOT.- Radical, minimalist, joyous - over the past 50 years, German painter Imi Knoebel's work has taken the shape of a sensitive and expressive reinvention of the abstract.

Trained in Darmstadt, then in Düsseldorf's Fine Arts Academy under the watchful eye of Joseph Beuys, Knoebel asserts avant-garde influences on his art. Kandinsky, Bauhaus, constructivism, Mondrian, suprematism and Malevitch have featured in his personal pantheon from the very beginning of his career. Spurred on by the work produced by American minimalist and abstract artists such as Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Donald Judd and Carl Andre, Knoebel later sought to continuously reinvent new forms through painting, sculpture and installations. Knoebel views the abstract as an ever-shifting continuum within which shapes from the past resurface.

A meeting of minds
The paths of Knoebel and Fernand Léger first crossed in 1979. Knoebel was invited to create a large installation at the Winterthur Museum of Art, and produced a key work entitled Genter Raum. Themed around the idea of order and chaos, this work of art encompasses construction materials, painted panels laid randomly on the ground or rigorously structured on the wall. Only one reference to art history emerges in the Winterthur piece: a Still Life (1927) by Fernand Léger.

Biot's Musée National Fernand Léger is now inviting Imi Knoebel to enter into dialogue with the French pioneer of modernism. Among the many works in the collection, the German artist chose to focus on the ceramics produced by Fernand Léger in his winter years in Biot, rather than his paintings.

These enamelled clay pieces embody the Normandy-born artist's full maturity of expression, illustrating his attempts at pushing his art beyond the boundaries of painting. The relief work and enamelled ronde-bosses here interact with volume, contrast and colour, concepts that Imi Knoebel ponders and ideas that inspired him to create nine paintings in the summer of 2016, which are now on public display for the very first time as part of this exhibition.

Also on display is the installation entitled Ort-Mennige (2012), a pared-back space structured by three panels, in which visitors are invited to enter, stepping into a world bordered by colour in an intimate immersive experience.

Stained glass windows in Reims
One of France's historical landmarks, where King Clovis was baptised, where the Kings of France were coronated and where Joan of Arc led Charles VII for his coronation, Reims Cathedral is also a symbol of the city's martyr status during World War I. Blitzed by bombings for close to four years, the cathedral rises up like a symbol of the Resistance, still standing despite the significant damage caused. It is remarkable, then, that a German artist be invited to create stained glass windows for such a highly symbolic building, first in 2011 and then again in 2015. In the exhibition, a gallery dedicated to these two commissioned projects pays tribute to his epic creations.

As part of the 800-year anniversary of Reims Cathedral in 2008, the Ministry for Culture and Communication commissioned Imi Knoebel to create the six stained glass windows for the apse. The artist wanted to evoke the primary colours that dominated in the Middle Ages. Knoebel therefore elected to consciously restrict his palette for the glass to four shades of blue, three shades of red, two shades of yellow and one shade of white, sometimes opaque and at other times sheer. Finely set in lead, the coloured glass appears to be layered to create a fragmented space constructed like decoupage, a technique reminiscent of Matisse's work and one that Imi Knoebel began using in 1979 in his Rot, Gelb und Blau series. Proceeding in the tradition of the master glassmakers of the Middle Ages, Knoebel worked in the Simon Marq atelier in Reims, with the latter having manufactured Chagall's stained glass for the same building, and the Duchemin atelier in Paris.

In 2015, as part of celebrations to commemorate one hundred years since World War I, the artist put himself forward to create three new stained glass windows for Reims Cathedral's Joan of Arc chapel. Imi Knoebel expanded his palette for these three windows, this time using 27 colours in a composition that features layer after layer and broken lines. Manufacturing was entrusted to the Derix ateliers in Taunusstein (Germany) and was funded in full by the Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the North Rhine-Westphalia Foundation for Art. A gift from Germany to France, these three modern and uplifting windows for Reims are also a powerful symbol of reconciliation and forgiveness between the two nations.

Curator: Anne Dopffer, Head heritage Curator, Director of the Musées Nationaux du XXe Siècle des Alpes-Maritimes.

The concept for this exhibition was developed by Diana Gay, Heritage Curator.

A documentary by Peter Braatz, entitled Les nouveaux vitraux de la cathédrale de Reims, un cadeau de l’Allemagne à la France (Reims Cathedral's New Stained Glass Windows, A Gift from Germany to France), produced by Arte in 2015, is be screened in the auditorium for the duration of the exhibition.

A new approach to the Fernand Léger collection has been designed for visitors to enjoy during the exhibition.

The exhibition catalogue is available and includes a text written by Franz Wilhelm Kaiser, Director of Hamburg's Bucerius Kunst Forum (published by Editions DEL’ART).