MAX INGRAND
FOR SALE


Born in 1908 in Deux-Sèvres, Max Ingrand spent part of his youth in Chartres. The cathedral and its famous stained-glass windows, whose colors are magnified by the constantly changing light, fascinates him. "My cathedral! (...) The splendor and magic of the many fires that the admirable colors provide "will have a decisive effect on the whole of his career. He left for Paris to study at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs and graduated in 1927 from master glassmaker Jacques Gruber, one of the founders of the Ecole de Nancy. Jacques Gruber is undoubtedly the most renowned stained glass specialist of his time, with innumerable achievements, ranging from the stained glass windows of the Majorelle villa and the Nancy Chamber of Commerce to those of the Galeries Lafayette in Paris. Max Ingrand will learn the intricacies of glass work in his workshop, which is also involved in the restoration of stained glass windows. He was initially in charge of painting on glass, and was then introduced to the techniques of making stained-glass windows and to the many possibilities offered by this material which he falls literally in love with, and which he will now appropriate.
Max Ingrand left the workshop of Jacques Gruber in 1931 to found his own company. The creation of all the stained glass windows in the bay of the Sainte Agnès church in Maisons-Alfort in the early 1930s marked the beginning of his career as a master glassmaker. These stained-glass windows already illustrate the style that Max Ingrand is going to develop: numerous characters who will tend, over time, to an increasingly pronounced expressionism (with some incursions in the 60s towards abstraction), the importance of strong colors, Blue, green, yellow, as used between the XIIth and the XVIth century. In the aftermath of the war, which he spent largely in a prison camp in Silesia where his faith was strengthened, Max Ingrand is one of the most sought-after glassmakers for the restoration and construction of churches . His creations, in an essentially figurative vein, are in opposition to the ideas of the Dominican father Marie-Alain Couturier, who advocates a renewal of sacred art and calls on artists such as Pierre Matisse, Fernand Léger or Alfred Manessier to realize the stained glass windows of religious buildings. At the end of his career, the workshops of Max Ingrand will have been used on more than two hundred churches, not only in France as at the Saint Gatien cathedral in Tours, the Beauvais cathedral or the Jacobins church in Toulouse, but also in Belgium, Germany, United States, Canada, Brazil and Venezuela.


The decors of the engraved glasses of Max and Paule Ingrand are characterized by the sharpness of the line, the precision of the shapes, a powerful drawing. The mastery of the technique is such that it allows all subtleties to their creations, whose quality surpasses the achievements of their many followers, and makes them inimitable . It is therefore not surprising that most of the decorators of the time used them for hanging mirrors, table tops or slabs which serve not only for the decoration of furniture but also for important building sites, interiors. Among them are René Prou, Gilbert Poillerat, Marc du Plantier, René Drouet, Jules Leleu, Maxime Old, André Arbus and Raymond Subes. For the hotel of the baron Empain in Brussels, they conceive a canopy of thirty square meters where Hercules shoots down the hydra of the Herne while frolic wild beasts and other animals amidst stars and planets that illuminate when the night comes ... For the legendary steamer "Normandie", they realize among others a "Toilette of Venus" and decorate with mirrors the walls of more than 240 bathrooms! The years of war lead to a de facto separation between Max and Paule, By a divorce in 1945, and the end of their collaboration. He meets with his friend Gilbert Poillerat, the famous ironworker, Marie-Alberte Madre-Rey, who will become his second wife and of whom he will have two children.

Passionate about glass, Max Ingrand wants to integrate this material as a major component of the architecture of his time. Already in the 1930s, he had developed metal tiles covered with enamel, unalterable and allowing innumerable colors and textures, patented under the name of "Raghès". After the war, he became interested in the glass of Saint-Just as a wall covering, commonly called antique glass. It will cover the paneling of the dining room of the casino of Monte Carlo in the early 1950s. It was then that he was contacted by the Saint-Gobain factory to become its artistic director. Thanks to the discovery of glass quenching, it is now possible to produce highly resistant polished glass, which can reach large sizes. Many decorators, like René Coulon or Raphaël, then introduce glass into the furniture they draw. Max Ingrand brings his experience of this material in the design of new glass products. A whole range of glasses are born, colored, silvered, smoked, among others. He designed the new headquarters of the Saint Gobain factory, opens it on the outside with huge bay windows, conceals the light sources of the ceilings behind glass cabochons cut with a chisel. He even draws furniture, inspired by the creations of Gio Ponti and Italian design. Max Ingrand is aware that the use of glass, combined with light - whether natural or electric - offers new and multiple possibilities. At the beginning of the 1960s, he enlisted Ben Swilders, as director of the decoration department, whom he decided to create in his workshops at the Tenaille passage in Paris, where he had been living since 1932. From 1962 on, Interior architecture of countless public and private enterprises. They collaborated with the architects Edouard and Jean Niermans for the auditoriums of Radio France (1962), Olivier-Clément Cacoub for the palace of President Bourguiba in Skanes (1962), Pierre Dufau for the Atomic Energy Test Center ), Louis Sainsaulieu for the headquarters of Peugeot (1966).

Max Ingrand, President of the French Society of Lighting, former Vice-President of the Society of Decorative Artists, disappeared brutally in 1969. This humanist leaves behind a sum of creations all having the aim of magnifying the material that he loved so much, the glass, as transcended by light, which has so fascinated him.
![]() Artcurial - Paris - 11 June 2007 Table by Maxime Old and Max Ingrand Rosewood, with three gilt glass plates Cm : 74,5 x 180 x 100 cm Inch : 29 3/8 x 70 7/8 x 39 3/8 in Price Realized : €22,310 ($29,696 USD) |