Alongside artists such as Jean-Michel Atlan, André Lanskoy, Georges Mathieu and, above all, Hans Hartung and Pierre Soulages – with whom he enjoyed a sincere friendship – Gérard Schneider quickly saw his work take on an international dimension. From the mid-1940s onwards, major exhibitions bringing together the leading members of the Lyrical Abstraction movement were organised in Paris, notably at the Lydia Conti and Denise René galleries. The Phillips Gallery in Washington purchased Opus 445 from 1950 and the MoMA in New York acquired Opus 95 B from 1955.
Exhibitions followed one after another around the world.

From the early 1950s onwards, Gérard Schneider's works were exhibited in Europe: at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, for example, where a first retrospective was held in 1953, followed by a second in 1962 in partnership with the Kunstverein in Düsseldorf. He also took part in the first two editions of Documenta in Kassel in 1955 and 1959. Gérard Schneider exhibited three times at the Venice Biennale: in 1948, 1954 and 1966.

From 1945 onwards, most of Schneider's abstract paintings were given the title Opus to affirm their place in a musical sequence.