GÉRARD SCHNEIDER

Rhapsody in Blue

In 1924, George Gershwin composed Rhapsody in Blue, using a highlyinnovative approach to music composition.1 Rooted in its time, itincorporated elements of jazz and popular music, effectively conveyingthe challenges of musical creation and the necessity of staying in touchwith the truth and reality of the world.

In a similar manner, Gérard Schneider revolutionised European post-warabstraction two decades later. In 1946, two exhibitions in Paris heralded major upheavals in abstract painting: 1ère exposition de Domela HartungSchneider at the Salle du centre des recherches de la rue Cujas andPeintures abstraites: Dewasne, Deyrolle, Marie Raymond, Hartung,Schneider at gallery Denise René. These exhibitions propelled a groupof young abstract painters to the forefront of the art scene, who quicklymade a name for themselves by offering a radically new take on thenotion of abstraction.

Schneider was soon regarded as the leader of this so-called ‘lyrical’ abstraction. His first solo exhibition was held at the Lydia Conti gallery inParis from April 25 to May 17, 1947. Art critics and the art world ingeneral were quick to recognise his work’s international appeal, leadingto his first solo museum exhibition in Germany in 1952.²

New York

Gérard Schneider’s work was first exhibited in New York at the BettyParsons Gallery in 1949.³ This seminal exhibition marked the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship between the Swiss-born French painterand New York City. Starting in the late 1940s, Schneider exhibitedregularly in the United States, especially in New York. He was featuredin the traveling exhibition Advancing French Art in 1951–1952,⁴ whichobtained an exceptional reception in New York and marked an importantmoment in the encounter between American and European abstraction.In 1955, New York gallery owner Samuel Kootz exhibited Schneider forthe first time.⁵ His first solo exhibition at Kootz Gallery in 1956 was apublic and critical success, introducing the American public to apowerful, gestural painting style that impressed with its strength andpresence.⁶

‘Gérard Schneider... accelerates at a rapid rate his broad, bold brushstrokes. Or else, he slows them down to being almost motionless. In anycase, his foot is always on the accelerator... Schneider manipulates hisspeed with great mastery. Forms plunge and colour, rich, sumptuous,switches on and off like the lamp of a lighthouse.’

— Stuart Preston, The New York Times, April 15, 1956

Working closely with Samuel Kootz, Schneider had five solo exhibitionsin New York.7 Kootz was one of the great promoters of Europeanabstraction in the United States, and it was through him that some ofSchneider’s major works found their way into the collections of majorNorth American museums.

Blue Abstraction

‘It is necessary to reach transcendence, to go beyond oneself, to gobeyond nature, to go beyond the object to create a work that is originaland autonomous, whose subject comes from interiority and not fromrepresentation, which is without figurative allusion.’ – Gérard Schneider.

From 1945 onwards, Schneider abandoned any reference to the real,advocating an autonomous abstraction wholly detached from any ‘figurative allusion.’ He nonetheless drew on his deep knowledge of theold masters and the history of twentieth-century artistic trends to enrichhis pictorial language and vocabulary: form, gesture, and colour.

Schneider was an exceptional colourist, confident in his ability to workwith assemblages of colour, create contrasts, and make spaces comealive with colour. Blue, a colour that carries immense symbolic andemotional weight, occupies a special place in his work. For Schneider,blue must always resonate with a warm colour, as it is a space in its ownright. It is much more than the obvious symbolism of air or water; it is theopening – the royal road – to the metaphysical dimension of colour, thepath to abstraction.

— Christian Demare

‘I think you and Pierre [Soulages] are the two men I am most confidentin today.’ Samuel Kootz in a letter to Gérard Schneider, March 25, 1957.

1 Rhapsody in Blue premiered on February 12, 1924, at Aeolian Hall in New York. It was presented under the title An Experiment in Modern Music, with George Gershwin himself at the piano.

2 Gérard Schneider, Paris, [July 1952], Studio für Zeitgenössische Kunst – Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld, Germany.

3 Painted in 1949, European and American Painters, October 10 – 29, 1949, Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, NY, USA.

4 Organised by New York gallery Louis Carré, the exhibition featured five major works by Gérard Schneider, alongside works by Jean Bazaine, Maurice Estève, Hans Hartung, André Lanskoy, Charles Lapicque, Pierre Soulages, and Nicolas de Staël. The exhibition was shown at the following venues: Philips Gallery, Washington; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The J.B. Speed Art Museum,Louisville; University of Indiana, Bloomington; Baltimore Museum of Art; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City.

5 Recent French Acquisitions: Soulages, Mathieu, Schneider, Dubuffet, Fauves, October 1955, Gallery Kootz, New York, NY, USA.

6 Gérard Schneider, New Paintings (April 9 – May 5, 1956), Galerie Kootz, New York, NY, USA.

7 Gérard Schneider, New Paintings (April 9 – May 5, 1956), New Paintings by Gérard Schneider (March 4 – 23, 1957), Schneider (March 11 – 29, 1958), Gérard Schneider (September 29 – October 17, 1959), Gérard Schneider (January 24 – February 11, 1961).