Born in 1896 in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland and died in 1896 in Paris. Gérard Schneider was naturalised in France in 1948 and grew up and studied in Neuchâtel. He arrived in Paris at the age of twenty and entered the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs, then the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts two years later, where he learned from Fernand Cormon, one of Van Gogh's former teachers. He held his first solo exhibition in Neuchâtel. 

The 1920s and 1930s were a period of learning about the history of art and the various artistic movements. In the mid-1930s, he became immersed in the abstraction revolution. He stopped painting from nature, his palette became darker and his brushstrokes more gestural. 

Schneider tended towards an abstraction of movement and soon became one of the three greatest names in this abstraction, later called lyrical. He was recognised for his unprecedented talent, both in Europe and internationally, and made a timeless mark on the history of art.