Gérard Schneider was born in Sainte-Croix, Switzerland in 1896. He travelled to Paris at the beginning of the First World War to study firstly at the École des Arts Decoratifs, and then at the École des Beaux Arts.
Schneider settled permanently in Paris in 1922, and became a French citizen in 1948. He participated in numerous Group exhibitions in Paris from 1926, including the Salon d' Automne, Salon de Mai, and the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. In 1946 he showed his paintings at the first Abstract Group exhibition held since the end of the Second World War at the prestigious Galerie Denise René in Paris.
By the 1950s Gérard Schneider became, with Hans Hartung and Pierre Soulages, an innovator of Lyrical Abstraction. He thought "painting should be looked at in the same way as music is listened to." His paintings were a spontaneous and instinctual expression of the moment. During this period he also exhibited in New York at the highly innovative Kootz Gallery, between 1955 and 1960.
Throughout his working life Gérard Schneider exhibited throughout France and abroad, and received numerous prizes, and a major retrospective was held at the Salon d'Automne in 1979. He died in Paris in 1986.
