Belgian-born painter, designer, and printmaker who settled in Paris in 1919 and became a French citizen. He had a family background of craft, for his father was a joiner and his mother a weaver. Early in his career he worked as a commercial designer-decorator (mainly for shops and apartments), painting in his spare time and taking evening classes at various art academies. However, in 1936 he met the French painter Charles Walch (1898–1948), who encouraged him to take up art professionally, and from that year he began exhibiting regularly at commercial galleries and avant-garde salons. He had his first one-man exhibition in 1949, at the Galerie Billiet Caputo, Paris, and from 1951 to 1954 he taught at the *Académie Ranson. Singier's early work combined elements from *Cubism, *Expressionism, and *Fauvism.