Gérard Schneider, a Swiss painter who became a French citizen in 1948, is one of the pioneers of lyrical abstraction.

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In Paris, he studied at the National School of Decorative Arts and then at the Beaux-Arts. While his work was first similar to impressionism and then to surrealism, in 1943 he found his own style: “informal” non-geometric abstraction.

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He frequents Pierre Soulages and Hans Hartung, with whom he shares a taste for gestural and personal abstraction. During his “light years” (1962 to 1972), his talents as a colorist grew in amplitude and his monochrome color areas gained space on the canvas: they became form and shapes became colors.

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“Under the aspect of vehement improvisation, this painting hides the most conscientious arrangement of the elements, the most severe control of relationships. Based on color, however, it starts from linear patterns, but the line was transformed into broad brush strokes with two hands.” Herta Wescher, January 1955

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Gérard Schneider's works are collected in the largest museums in the world - the Pompidou Center in Paris, the MoMA in New York, the Phillips Collection in Washington, the Fine Arts museums in Montreal and Seoul and the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro - and in renowned private collections and foundations, such as the Gandur Foundation for Art in Geneva.