Max Ingrand was among the most distinguished French glass artists of the twentieth century, celebrated for his innovative synthesis of traditional stained-glass craft and modern design. Born in Bressuire on 20 December 1908, Ingrand spent part of his childhood in Chartres, the city whose Gothic cathedral and shimmering windows indelibly shaped his imagination. He studied under Jacques Gruber at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he absorbed both the Symbolist lyricism of the Nancy school and the emerging aesthetic of modernist clarity.

Ingrand’s career bridged the worlds of monumental stained glass and industrial design, uniting spiritual luminosity with technical mastery. After the devastation of the Second World War, he was commissioned to create new glazing schemes for numerous French churches, his work helping to define the visual renewal of sacred art in post-war France. Between 1948 and 1952, he designed an ambitious ensemble of forty-three windows for the Cathedral of Notre-Dame-du-Pré at Le Mans, one of the largest and most coherent modern glazing programmes of its time. His artistry combined the disciplined geometry of lead and colour with a poetic sensitivity to light, giving the ancient architecture a renewed spiritual radiance.

Further ecclesiastical commissions followed across France and abroad, notably for the Cathedrals of Washington and Quebec, where his use of restrained palettes and bold, abstracted form conveyed transcendence through pure chromatic modulation. In 1954, he designed a series of refined stained-glass panels for the Château de Chenonceau, adapting his ecclesiastical sensibility to a secular and historical setting. That same year, he was appointed Art Director of FontanaArte, the prestigious Italian glass and lighting firm founded by Gio Ponti. During his thirteen-year tenure, Ingrand produced a series of lamps, sconces, and lighting objects distinguished by their elegance, craftsmanship, and timeless modernity—many of which remain in production today.

Ingrand’s dual mastery of sacred and domestic light marked him as a singular figure in twentieth-century art. His stained glass, often characterised by crystalline segmentation, subtle gradients of tone, and a painterly control of translucency, transcended narrative depiction to evoke atmosphere and revelation. Conversely, his industrial designs distilled those same principles into objects of serene modern luxury. He was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur, an honour recognising both his artistic distinction and his contribution to the cultural reconstruction of post-war France.

Max Ingrand’s legacy endures in the radiant windows that grace cathedrals and chapels across Europe and the Americas, and in the luminous interiors enlivened by his FontanaArte creations. In his hands, glass—whether sacred or domestic—became a medium of illumination in the fullest sense: at once material, spiritual, and profoundly human.

He died in Paris on 25 August 1969.