GRARD SCHNEIDER

Born in 1896, the Swiss artist Gérard Schneider was a founding member and major proponent of the Lyrical Abstraction movement, together with artists such as Wols, Pierre Soulanges and Hans Hartung. The movement was developed at the same time as Abstract Expressionism in the US, which was pioneered by artists Paul Jenkins, Norman Bluhm, Sam Francis and Ellsworth Kelly, among many others.

Lyrical Abstraction emerged after the Second World War as a counter-movement against Cubism, Surrealism and Geometrical Abstraction. Proponents of Lyrical Abstraction believed that painting should represent personal expression. According to one commentator, Schneider’s work managed to do just this, since it expressed “passion, fury, romanticism.”

In 1950, Schneider’s works were exhibited at the Louis Carré Gallery in Paris, and from 1955 to 1960 they were shown at the famous Kootz Gallery, New York, where an exclusivity contract connected the artist and the major American art dealer Samuel Kootz.

Today, Schneider’s work can be found in the permanent collections of major international museums including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the MoMa in New York, the Phillips Collection in Washington, the Museum of Fine Arts of Montréal and the Modern Art Museum of Rio de Janeiro, as well as in many private collections and foundations, including the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art in Geneva. The Artist’s Estate is managed by Perrotin Gallery.