Gérard Schlosser (1931-2022) is a French painter.
He studied goldsmithing at the École des Arts Appliqués in Paris where he was simultaneously introduced to sculpture as an autodidact.
He will also follow a brief training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris before devoting himself fully to painting.
His beginnings already led him to Figuration, he represented parts of the body in flat areas, often from the front and surrounded by black.
The nudity of the female body is particularly highlighted, in such a way that the viewer feels in front of this body.
These body fragments seem to be influenced by the research carried out by the artist in the Pop Art movement.
He started using a new medium in the early 1970s, photography.
He uses it on the same model and in the same vein as what he produced in paint.
He then became affiliated with other French artists considered Hyperrealists or part of Narrative Figuration, in opposition to the Abstract movement that had taken place at the same time.
He uses new tools such as the episcope, which allows him to project an image onto the surface of the canvas in order to reproduce it in painting.
During the same period he became a photomontage artist, systematizing the technique from 1970.
At the end of the 1960s, he renewed his technique again.
Schlosser coats the canvases he produces with sand, in order to give a certain grain to the colored parts of his works.
The texture of the grain of sand adds light and shade to the production, which makes it possible to incorporate additional modeling and depth into the work.
The titles he gives to his works also play a certain role in the understanding of his artistic creation.
They contribute to the very identity of the work he presents, so we find titles like: did you pay the membership fee? or again: she is still having no luck with her husband, denoting a certain humor but the need to bring a certain precision to the viewer in order to read her works.

‍

“I am not a man of action, in the activist sense, but I try to act in my own way. We must show that despite the factory, the office, the pace of work, the people love to live and have the strength to fight, without much speech, in the banality of daily life.”
Gérard Schlosser