Guillaume Gillet, « la liaison de l’art monumental et des arts plastiques », principe ou réalité ? Le cas des vitraux de l’église Notre-Dame à Royan

With its soaring silhouette, the Notre-Dame church at Royan dominates the city and symbolises its rebirth after the Second World War. The building is one of the major manifestations of the revival of religious architecture after 1945. Its architect, Guillaume Gillet, with the engineer Bernard Lafaille, invented a Modern Gothic idiom that gave new life to the principle of uniting constructive and architectural expression. The structure in reinforced concrete comprises a programme of stained glass designed by the glass painter Henri Martin-Granel. Between the architect and the artist, the question of the authorship of the plastic work can be posed: does it belong to the one or to the other? Is the final work the result of a collaboration between two designers or the subordination of the glass painter to the architect’s aesthetic will? The church and its stained-glass windows offer a way to understand the meaning of the connection between monumental art and visual arts. Guillaume Gillet addressed this issue in 1965, when he was trying to define the aesthetic options for the stained glass of Notre-Dame in Royan