Sascha Schneider (Russian, 1870–1927) born Rudolph Karl Alexander Schneider in Saint Petersburg, was raised in Zürich and later trained at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where his early fascination with the male form and mythic allegory took shape. By the early 1900s, his symbolist paintings, which were stark, theatrical, often erotic, earned him a professorship at the Weimar Art School and a long-standing collaboration illustrating the adventure novels of Karl May.
Openly gay in an era of criminalization and moral panic, Schneider moved between Germany and Italy, traveling as far as the Caucasus with fellow artist Robert Spies. His brief exile shaped a body of work obsessed with strength, control, and the ecstatic vulnerability of the male nude. Today, Schneider is remembered less for his technical affiliations and more for the haunting clarity of his queer and idealist vision.
