Page 54 - Studio International - July 1965

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1 ride over one another. do not easily yield their secret. canvases lead him to an impasse.
Lapoujade
Smptease under the sta,rs We could find it sufficient to abandon ourselves to their He leaves to others these silhouettes cut out in the
Galerie Pierre Domec charm. But one likes best what one understands well colour like a Chinese play of shadows and goes back to
2 and only the examination of a series of old canvases Bonnard. The dazzling of the pure colour allows him
Gerard Schneider like those hung at the rue de Messine will allow one to to re-create an atmosphere. a state of mind. but not
Pamung 1958
37 x 130 cm. penetrate in this universe, dense and without con­ to communicate a more personal feeling. Esteve
Galerie Arnaud
cession. One perceives all which is dissimulated under rhythms his surface, organises it, finds again Fernand
this homogeneous but intransigent fac;:ade. Twenty Leger when he utilizes independently the one from the
years of anguish. of doubt, of audacious leaps and other the specific powers of the colour and the drawing,
steps back are narrated to us in so many canvases. dismantling the mechanism of every element of the
From stylisations to stylisations. Esteve opened up new painting, and in playing indefinitely up to the original
avenues, but the extreme simplification of the 37-38 synthesis which characterises his work. Are twenty

years needed to create a painter? The intimate journal
of this creation which one goes through at Louis Carre
incites in any case towards reflection and modesty.
It is true that all true artists are reflective and modest.
Gerard Schneider is not less so than Esteve. He too
has known the anguishes of creation and of ·going
back'. His evolution, as is shown to us by the Galerie
Arnaud, has been, however, less complex. Schneider,
owes to a Surrealistic early period a very free, if not
disdainful attitude towards reality. Like others, he tried
the path of stylisation and understood that it was
leading him towards decoration. But what was always
uppermost to his eyes. was the poetical and unique
atmosphere of each work. When he cut away from
representation it was totally and definitely. He did not
look for a lexicon of symbolic forms, nor approximative
plastic equivalents. Then and there he aimed at the
creation of a coloured ambiance, dynamic, charged
with emotion, comparable to that which listening to
an orchestral symphony brings us. He started in this
path with all the resources of painting, as the orchestra­
conductor calls for all his executants. A spirit and a
style blossomed out firstly in vast supple and pure
forms of an architectural grandeur where reigns a
contemplative quietness. Then the rhythm became
faster, exacerbated itself: the drawing became more
nervous, the colour stronger, the contrasts always more
violent. A powerful lyricism, which is only controlled
by the work and the plastic requirements, develops
itself throughout all the recent work of Schneider.
Today, at sixty-eight years of age, he is the most
romantic of the modern painters.
The lyricism of Schneider makes us partake of a
human emotion to which is mixed the aesthetic
emotion that invests the beauty of the work. He never
indicates to us either the cause or the origin.
A social concern-very worthy-for communication
has pushed Lapoujade (Galerie Pierre Domec) since
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