Gantner was born in 1948 in Seoul, Korea. He was instantaneously attracted to color and form. By the age of 12 he was attempting to recreate his universe through the medium of paint. Gantner is primarily a self-taught artist. His passion for the Impressionists and the Post-Impressionists was responsible for his move to France. This allowed him to freely study their works and to explore their universe. The majority of Gantner's paintings are set in Provence and the Midi. The artist's fascination of quaint mountain villages with their narrow, winding streets, becomes a perfect vehicle for the true subject of his works--solitude. Gantner's paintings are visual records of absence. This theme is reinforced through the artist's use of confined luminous and shadowed spaces that are defined and contained by vertical walls of stone. Even when the painting is not of a narrow village street, solitude and absence are still present. Trained in the Impressionist vein, Gantner has resolved the age old Poussiniste--Rubeniste conflict by combining the strengths and qualities of line with color. This is apparent in Gantner's return to Giverny to repaint Monet's Japanese bridge and water lilies. The spontaneous quality that defined the Impressionism of Monet had given way to a painted drawing that is a controlled application of color structured within a strong linear composition. "The good paintings" like Baudelaire used to say "is faithful to the dream". The dream, that is to say the imaginary creation, of the representation of a subject appears in a form that is both real and metamorphosized. Painter of flowers and landscapes, Gantner makes us enter into his imagianey world and invites us to share his joy of painting. Painter of happiness, of luminosity, of softness, Gantner makes us discover a new facet of his talent through his floral compositions, of transparencies and subtle harmonies, full of charm and freshness. Painter-poet, Gantner, transmits his emotion, his sincerity in his own interpretation of nature, of the beauty of beings and things and in a personal style that is the mark of a true artist.