Gérard Schneider was born in Sainte-Croix in Switzerland in 1896. He spent his childhood in Neuchâtel where his father was a cabinetmaker and an antique dealer.

At the age of 20, Schneider went to Paris to study at the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs; in 1918, he entered the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Paris to join the studio of Fernand Cormon, who had also taught Vincent van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

In 1922, Gérard Schneider settled permanently in Paris. The 1920s and 1930s were marked by a long period of training for the artist in different techniques and the history of painting.

In 1926, Schneider was exhibited for the first time at the Salon d'Automne. The work he showed, L'Allée hippique (“Horse Pathway”), attracted much attention. Schneider also frequented musical circles in Paris. At the Salon des Surindépendants in 1936, the artist exhibited five paintings, including Figures dans un jardin (“Figures in a Garden”), which were praised by the critic at La Revue Moderne, who wrote: “a style, figures of such agility that the expression of movement seems to have been included in the rapid technique”.

It was also a period of discovery for Schneider, who was exposed to the artistic movements of this century of upheaval and tragedy.

In the mid-1930s, the painter Gérard Schneider assimilated the revolution sparked by Kandinsky's abstraction, while also exploring the new horizons introduced by Surrealism. The artist no longer painted from reality. His palette darkened, with black coming to play an important and structuring role. He wrote poems and frequented members of Surrealist circles such as Luis Fernandez, Oscar Dominguez, Paul Éluard and Georges Hugnet.

Towards abstraction (1938-1949)

From 1938 onwards, the titles of Gérard Schneider's works no longer referred to reality; the three pieces sent to the Salon des Surindépendants were all called Composition. In 1939, the artist met Picasso. Around 1944, he definitively abandoned all references to reality in his paintings.

In 1945, the Musée National d'Art Moderne bought one of Schneider's paintings (Composition, 1944).

In the vibrant art scene of the immediate post-war period, Schneider's art played a pioneering role in the birth of a new form of abstraction, a style of abstract art that was taking shape and gaining ground in a climate of reconstruction in Europe. In Paris, the painter Gérard Schneider and other trailblazing artists proposed a return to a radical approach to abstraction, to an abstract style that no longer had any connection with the real and perceptible world. A landmark form of abstract art that was perfectly aligned with the aesthetic imperatives of this transitional period, this movement became known as Lyrical Abstraction.

The “Glorious Years” (1950-1961)

Alongside artists such as Jean-Michel Atlan, André Lanskoy, Georges Mathieu and especially Hans Hartung and Pierre Soulages - with whom he formed sincere friendships - Gérard Schneider very quickly saw his work acquire an international dimension. From the mid-1940s onwards, major exhibitions grouping the main members of the Lyrical Abstraction movement were organised in Paris, especially at the galleries of Lydia Conti and Denise René.

This vital creative movement was revealed to audiences abroad with major touring exhibitions. These appeared across Germany, for example, from the late 1940s onwards with the exhibition Wanderausstellung Französischer Abstrakter Malerei (“Touring Exhibition of French Abstract Painting”), which toured throughout West Germany in 1948 and 1949. Schneider's works were exhibited immediately afterwards in the United States: at the Betty Parsons Gallery (in 1949 and 1951) and in the major touring exhibition Advancing French Art that was shown all over the country, from Chicago to San Francisco.

Between 1955 and 1961, the Samuel Kootz Gallery in New York represented Schneider across the Atlantic as his exclusive dealer in the United States. The artist joined his friend Pierre Soulages at the prestigious gallery.

The Phillips Gallery in Washington bought the artist's 1950 work Opus 445 and the Museum of Modern Art in New York bought his 1955 work Opus 95 B.

In 1956, Gérard Schneider married his second wife Loïs Frederick - a young American woman who had come to Paris to study art on a Fulbright scholarship - whom he had met through Marcel Brion. Around the same time, Schneider met Eugène Ionesco.

A series of exhibitions followed in quick succession around the world.

From the early 1950s onwards, Gérard Schneider's works were exhibited in Europe: in Brussels at the Palais de Beaux-Art, for example, where the artist's first retrospective exhibition was held in 1953, followed by a second retrospective in 1962 in association with the Düsseldorf Kunstverein. Schneider also participated in the first two editions of Documenta in Kassel in 1955 and 1959.

Gérard Schneider's work was exhibited three times at the Venice Biennale: in 1948, 1954 and 1966.

Schneider was awarded the Lissone Prize in 1957.

His work also travelled regularly to Japan from 1950 until the early 1970s, including at the Japan International Art Exhibition. Moreover, the artist was awarded the Tokyo Governor's Award during the Japan International Art Exhibition in Tokyo in 1959.

The painter Gérard Schneider was also exhibited several times at the São Paulo Biennale: in 1951, 1953 and 1961. At the 1961 edition, Jean Cassou - chief curator of the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris - asked Schneider to create four 2 x 3 m canvas paintings as part of a group of ten large format works that were exhibited at the event.

The “Years of Enlightenment” (1962-1972)

Throughout the 1960s, Schneider maintained a close connection with the Milan-based dealer, Bruno Lorenzelli, who organised many exhibitions of his work around Italy. This decade of change saw Gérard Schneider's style of painting acquire more colour and become freer while his gestural style acquired a definitively calligraphic dimension.

Yet again, Gérard Schneider's work evolved and echoed the aesthetic aspirations of his time, as well as a complex interior process that had begun many years earlier, to form a synthesis of the notions of form, colour and space.

At the 1966 Venice Biennale, an entire room of the French Pavilion was devoted to Schneider's work.

Similarly, a major retrospective of the artist's work was held in 1970 in Turin where about one hundred paintings were exhibited at the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna. A great success, the exhibition was subsequently presented at the “Terre des Hommes” Pavilion in Montreal.

The age of maturity and large works on paper (1973-1986)

At over 70 years of age, Gérard Schneider showed no signs of abating in his art. His passion remained as intense as ever. The volcanic eruption of colour in the artist's work burned as fervently as ever, as if destined to never be dimmed.

Exhibitions of Schneider's work continued at the same pace, such as those held by the Galerie Beaubourg in Paris.

The painter's fire and energy required a speed of execution that only paper seemed to allow. At the start of the 1980s, he turned his attention almost exclusively to this medium. And so, in the intimacy of his studio, large and luminous compositions full of colour, gestures and fiery passion were born, the unreal beauty of which continue to fascinate. These works were exhibited for the first time at the FIAC in Paris in 1983.

The painter Gérard Schneider left this world on 8 July 1986 at the age of 90 and bequeathed us an oeuvre that was both unfathomable in its aesthetic complexity and yet so intimate, human and sensitive.

In 1998, the art critic Michel Ragon published a major monograph on his work.

Access the Catalogue Raisonné