David Schneuer, a resident of Tel Aviv for the past 50 years, is immersed simultaneously in all the circumstances that make up his biography. His painting, however, is located somewhere outside the chronological sequence of art history. His enigmatic personality stands in stark contrast to his flowing imagination, to the pictorial diary unfolding before us in hundreds of pages, as an endless variation on a single, obsessive image. Schneuer peeps at the world, at his past and at the present only to return to his private world, conscious of, but uninvolved in times, places and situations. His feelings towards them have dissolved, they continue to exist through his imagination, out of a need to connect a restricted living-space with the outside world, reluctantly establishing minimal mutual relations. The images, however profuse and voluptuous, are alienated from external reality, as if rendered immune from it. and only its echoes penetrate the cloak of hermeticity in which he is wrapped.

It should not be assumed from the above, however, that there is anything oppressive about his art. Is it introverted then? Its configurations, devoted to the depiction of a very specific kind of society, are cast in a mould that fits the play instinct of a man who is not involved with his fellow-men. Both artist and his work are removed from any social context. And when his art does contain a statement on society, it is essentially sensuous and intuitive in its expression, existing mainly by force of inertia. Timeless and nameless, its starting point is always in the unknown.

It is a course of continuous accumulation. Accumulated experience, accumulated memories and images, accumulated fresh starts. Nevertheless, both his life and art seem completely devoid of nostalgia. His creative energy has left behind a series of disconnections. Its vitality springs from the new beginnings. The past was filtered through it, crystallizing into an airtight present — the present of a veteran artist who, as mentioned above, does not concern himself with contemporary art anyway. The majority of the Tel Aviv art galleries are concentrated at walking distance from his home, but Schneuer keeps away from them. He professes not to be an intellectual. With the same touch of irony he claims to be a craftsman, and more seriously - a craftsman who paints for pleasure,
In his top-floor Tel Aviv apartment, the artist ' who paints for pleasure has a "closed balcony" — like thousands of others, unifying gaping house-fronts in the Bauhausiau city — which functions as a studio. Its drawers overflow with hundreds of sketches, drawings and paintings, as well as postersand photographs — a medley of evidence of the “craftsman's" many years of versatile work. The alls of his spacious, very simply furnished living-room, however, are reserved for a display of his resent work: a few dozen paintings, a small cavalcade that Schneuer hangs to please himself, continually replacing the paintings with others.

These are a few examples of the late phase of his life and art, less than 20 years, devoted in the main painting.
His only language after 50 years in Tel Aviv is German, and he speaks broken Hebrew. Most of is acquaintances - artists as well as others - were “Yekkes” like himself, and a minority were of Polish extraction. Almost all were, in varying degrees, refugees of the Nazi regime, and almost ill are now dead. "The Poles regarded me as a “Yekke”, and the “Yekkes” as a Pole", recalls Schneuer. "Yekke" or Pole? Today he speaks with a touch of nostalgia of being born in the town of Przemisl, although he does not remember a thing about it. His father was born there, and his mother, a peasant's daughter, was from a neighbouring village. Przemisl, situated in Galicia, was in those days a Polish town under Austrian rule, "a place inhabited by Poles, Russians, Austrians, and what have you". Among its Jews, constituting about one-third of the population, there were many tradesmen.

David was born in, 1905. In his early childhood the family, on its way to America, delayed in Hamburg, and eventually settled for good in Munich. "My father, a handsome man, belonged to the middle intelligentsia. He had studied in a Yeshiva and knew his Talmud. He wanted to be a writer, but was forced by circumstances to become a businessman. His German was faultless, "whereas my mother spoke a mixture of German and Yiddish", When his father was conscripted into the army during the First World War, his mother brought up the children, eking out an existence from a dress shop. "I went to a Catholic school and grew up to some extent at home, and more in the streets, playing with the Bavarian children of the neighbourhood". Towards the end of his studies at the OBERREALSCHULE (secondary school), Schneuer was a member both pf BAR KOCHBA, a non-Zionist Jewish sports club, and of BLAU-WEISS, an association preparing its members for Zipnist activity. In .this framework, Schneuer was sent to East Prussia and trained in assorted farming chores: loading the harvest on horses, sowing potatoes. Schneuer underwent some of the formative experiences of his life before the age of 20.eanwhile, he did not know whether to be a German, a German Jew or a Zionist Jew, a farmer or a merchant. Of medium height and broad-shouldered, diligent, and energetic, he was destined to become a “craftsaman”. “Farming was actually my first preparation for craftsmanship,” Says Schneuer. The turn of events, combined with his intuition and strong sensuality, were to make the craftsman onto an artist.

Upon returning from Prussia he took to lettering and painting signboards for Jewish shops in Munich. He spent six months with a sign painter in Berlin. Upon returning to Munich he applied to the Kunstgewerbeschule (school of arts and crafts) in the Louisenstrasse. Schneuer relates: “Professor Richard Klein, who was in charge of the Munchner Konstlerfeste, assigned us to design a poster for the event. I submitted two sketches and was thrown out of school for ‘insufficient talent’, only to discover that the actual poster announcing the Kunstlerfeste was based on one of my sketches”. From there he went on to the Berufsschule (vocational school) in the Werkenriederstrasse, under the direction of professor Ruckert. “it was a good school where I learned to make decorative designs”. To support himself during his studies, he designed “expressionist and simple” posters. Among his Munich friends was Georg Gidal brother of the well-known photographer Tim Gidal, and a photographer in his own right. He persuaded Schneuer to go to Paris. Schneuer followed his advice. “Why Paris?” he asks today. “For no particular reason. I was naïve. I arrived in Paris with a Scanty knowledge of French, laboriously acquired during six years of study. A friend found me a hotel in Montparnasse. For half a year I lived in a room on the sixth floor, a tiny room with a tiny table. In the evenings I would sit drawing from my imagination, and during the day I roamed the streets”. Most of the drawings he did in Paris disappeared together with his books after his release from Dachau.

Upon his return to Munich – once more taking the advice of Georg Gidal – he introduced himself at the Munchnern Kammerspiele Im Schauspielhuse, and was engaged at the theater. The first part of his artistic career had begun. It was to come to an end five years later, in 1932.