The original Swiss painter Gérard Schneider (1896 -1986) is certainly one of the greatest masters of the "Lyrical Abstraction". (…)

In Neuchatel, as he was fourteen, he came at painting, very interested in Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, through books Professor Alfred Blailé lent him. But very soon he also found in the works of Delacroix, Courbet and Cézanne material to his own inspiration, when received at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris. Until the beginning of the 1939-1945 war, he worked perfecting his knowledge of painting, he restored old paintings and composed his first abstract works.

But the year 1944-1945 is a turning in Schneider’s work.

His constant desire to research, renewal and invention sets him as a totally subjective and abstract painter (…).
[In 1948] he was invited to the Venice Biennale, where he is considered one of the most significant of the avant-garde artists. He exhibited a second time at the Gallery Conti, and took French nationality, to finally decide to stay in Paris (…). After experimenting with many techniques, he comes to a gestural expression of his technique, in which shapes and colors explode with force in a modern romanticism, traversed by flashes of joy and light. (…)
 
During the years 1951-1961, came the affirmation of Gérard Schneider’s work in France and his consecration abroad (…), first through numerous exhibitions, where he is recognized as one of the most important contemporary artists. The years 1962-1972 were the years "light" Schneider. His talent as a colorist develops, the solid monochromatic colors are gaining space in the canvas, they become shapes and shapes become colors. In 1975, the artist received the Grand Prix National des Arts.

In 1983, his birthplace, Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and the city of Dunkirk devoted a major retrospective while he goes on working with large compositions of acrylic paintings on canvas and gouache on paper, all full of light and flamboyance, which remain among the most beautiful. He died July 8, 1986.