Leonie Schneider is a The Hague based artist who is originally from Munich, Germany and whose current discipline is painting. Schneider has studied Fine Arts at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague and graduated in 2018 from the Autonoom Section. She started working in the department shortly after her graduation and since then also joined the metal workshop team at the academy.
A recurring theme in Leonie Schneiders oeuvre is the observation of human behaviour. The element of theatre and entering a stage on which a scene is performed, is an experience Leonie discovered as a tool in her artistic language during her study. In her graduation work Leonie constructed motorised metal sculptures that the viewer would “interrupt” during their act, when entering her installation. Painting had been a practice Leonie always did as a way of thinking and reflecting on her installations, yet she never considered painting to be the end result until she started her individual studio practice in The Hague.
The work that developed throughout experimenting in the last four years is a continuous series of paintings that focuses on recurring characters drawn from imagination. Leonie has a strong fascination with the “made up”. With every painting she makes she sharpens the personalities of her characters. The characters she develops are always related to each other. The power structures between siblings and the role a member takes within its family shapes the narratives Leonie builds. The psychological therapy method “family constellation” has been a shaping inspiration in her work. Her work results in a portrait of social behaviour, in which she triggers the empathy to the characters by her focus on interpersonal behaviour of siblings.
Since 2020 Schneider collaborates with the Textile Museum and transforms her paintings into tapestries.