GÉRARD SCHNEIDER & THE YEARS OF STUDY (1916-1937)

Gérard Schneider was born on the 28th of April 1896 in Sainte-Croix, Switzerland. He spent his childhood and his student years in Neuchâtel.

At the age of 20, he entered the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and two years later the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Paris under Fernand Cormon, who had also been Van Gogh’s teacher among other artists.

Gérard Schneider decided to settle permanently in Paris in 1922, which marks the beginning of a long period of learning the history of painting and the complexity of different artistic techniques.

Gérard Schneider exhibited at the Salon d’Automne for the first time in 1926, where his work L’Allée hippique (Horse Pathway) attracted attention. Ten years later, at the Salon des Surindépendants, Gérard Schneider exhibited five paintings that received wide critical acclaim.  La Revue Moderne referred to “a style, figures of such agility that the expression of movement seems to have been included in the rapid technique”.

Gérard Schneider also tirelessly studied the artistic movements that were born during this tragic post-war period. In the mid-1930s, he quickly assimilated the abstraction led by Kandinsky. He also discovered surrealism. While his palette darkened and he no longer painted from reality, Gérard Schneider frequented the surrealist groups of his time and especially some of its members: Paul Éluard, Oscar Dominguez, Luis Fernandez …

GÉRARD SCHNEIDER TOWARDS ABSTRACTION (1938-1949)

It was from the end of the 1930s that Gérard Schneider’s paintings no longer referred to reality. He gave the title Compositions to the three sent to the Salon des Surindépendants. His encounter with Picasso in 1939 encouraged his relationship with figurative art. Gérard Schneider definitively abandoned all references to reality around 1944, which was confirmed in 1945 when the Musée d’Art Moderne bought one of his paintings (Composition, 1944).

During this tragic period full of artistic twists and turns, Gérard Schneider played a crucial role in this new post-war abstraction. The new movement was part of the full reconstruction of Europe, in which art was also renewed and emancipated from earlier trends. Gérard Schneider was a true pioneer in this development towards abstraction. In Paris, with other avant-garde painters, Schneider proposed a totally abstract art, with no connection to reality. It matched the aesthetic imperatives of this period, and he became the master of this new abstraction, called Lyrical Abstraction.

GÉRARD SCHNEIDER & THE “GLORIOUS YEARS” (1950-1961)

As soon as the Second World War ended, several exhibitions grouping the main members of lyrical abstraction were organized in Paris, at the galleries of Lydia Conti and Denise René. Gérard Schneider’s work acquired an international dimension, alongside artists such as Hans Hartung and Pierre Soulages. The important travelling exhibition Wanderausstellung Französischer Abstrakter Malerei (Travelling exhibition of French abstract paintings) circulated in West Germany from 1946 to 1948. From the early 1950s, Gérard Schneider’s work travelled across Europe: for example to Brussels where there was a first retrospective in 1953, then a second in 1962. He exhibited three times at the Venice Biennale, in 1948, 1954 and 1966. In 1957, he won the award Premio Lissone.

Schneider’s works also travelled to the United States and were shown at the Betty Parsons’ gallery (in 1949 and 1951), and were also included in the major travelling exhibition Advancing French Art that was shown all over the country, making his work known from Chicago to San Francisco.

Later, the Samuel Kootz Gallery in New York was his representative in the United States, from 1955 to 1961. Gérard Schneider was quickly joined by his friend Pierre Soulages in this prestigious establishment. In 1955, the Phillips Gallery of Washington bought Opus 445 of 1950 and New York’s MoMa bought Opus 95 B of 1955. The following year, Gérard Schneider married Loïs Frédérick and met Eugène Ionesco. Exhibitions were held successively around the world.
His work also travelled regularly to Japan from 1950 until the early 1970s, and in particular for the International Art Exhibition in Tokyo in 1959, for which he was awarded the prize of the Governor of Tokyo. Gérard Schneider also exhibited several times at the São Paulo Biennale: in 1951, 1953 and 1961. Four incredible canvas paintings 2 x 3 m were presented.

GÉRARD SCHNEIDER & THE “BRIGHT YEARS” (1962-1972)

During the 1960s, Schneider maintained a close connection with the Milan-based dealer Bruno Lorenzelli who held many exhibitions of his work around Italy. It is during this decade that Gérard Schneider’s painting acquired more colour and freedom. The gesture acquired a definitively calligraphic dimension. Yet again, Gérard Schneider’s work evolved with its time, but was also the result of a complex interior process that had begun a lot earlier. For Schneider, it was about associating the notion of form, strong colours, and mastery of space.

At the 1966 Venice Biennale, he was honoured to have an entire room of the French Pavilion devoted to his work. In 1970, a major retrospective of his work was held in Turin. He exhibited more than a hundred paintings at the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna. This was a great success, and so the exhibition was continued in Montreal.

GÉRARD SCHNEIDER: MATURITY AND THE LARGE WORKS ON PAPER (1973-1986)

Gérard Schneider was more than 70 years old and his art was full of passion and intensity. Colours exploded and were joyful throughout his work, as if it would not stop expanding. His art continued to be circulated, with for example the many exhibitions held by the Galerie Beaubourg in Paris.
At the start of the 1980s, he turned to paper almost exclusively for his art. It enabled timeliness that maintained the vivacity of his work. In his studio, colourful and luminous compositions of unprecedented beauty were born, which today remain a source of wonder.
The painter Gérard Schneider died in 1986 and left behind an immense legacy for lyrical abstraction, in the aesthetic complexity of his work as well as in the beauty and poetry of his abstraction.
The art critic and historian Michel Ragon published a major monograph on his work in 1998.