Gustave Singier

Gustave Singier was a Belgian non-figurative painter, active in France as part of the new Paris School of Lyrical Abstraction and the Salon de Mai. He spent his childhood in German-occupied Belgium and in 1919 moved to France. He started to paint at the young age of 14. In 1923 he enrolled as a student at the Boulle school and from 1927 he worked as a draughtsman. A turning point in Singier’s career was when he met the painter Charles Walch in 1936, who put him in contact with artistic circles and exhibited Singier’s work at numerous Parisian Salons from 1936. During the World War, Singier exhibited his work in the exhibition ‘Vingt Peintres de Tradition Francaise’, an exhibition in defiance of the Nazi military occupation. In 1945 he was one of the founding members of the Salon de Mai and discovered Kandinsky, Klee, Mondrian, and through them abstract art.