Born in Antwerp, Serge Strosberg spent his childhood in Belgium and the United States, and received his formal and extensive art education in Paris at Academie Julian and Ecole des Beaux-Arts. After several successful Museum and gallery exhibitions in France, Belgium and the United States of compelling figurative paintings and portraits of people he found of interest, Strosberg relocated to New York in 2007 for the personal challenges and dreams that have always drawn people particularly artists - to this city.
Strosberg describes himself asœan expressionist, like the Germans but more humanistic and a compassionate observer of the nightlife. The New York nightlife that Strosberg has been observing and which informs some of his recent work takes place in underground clubs that dont come alive until 2AM and are populated by straights and gays of all stripes including socialites, transvestites, exotically clothed amazons and transsexuals. Like many artists before him, particularly those of the London School, Strosberg's practice also includes inviting people he meets during his forays to sit for him as studio models.

Strosberg's use of this aspect of the human drama as subject matter for his work, places him in the venerable European tradition of physically and psychologically representing the other in paintings, drawings and prints. In this context, other€ means anyone either outside of or at the margins of normal society. Rembrandt's early etchings of tramps, war veterans and orphans come to mind, as do Toulouse-Lautrec's paintings and lithographs of the performers and denizens of Montmartre's legendary nightclubs and dance halls during the fin-de-siecle. The paintings of Chaim Soutine (a major influence on Strosberg) during the late 1920's of uniformed pastry cooks, doormen, hotel and nightclub employees in Paris certainly fall within this genre. Among contemporary artists there is no better example of this approach to expressionistic portraiture than Lucian Freud's intimate and extraordinary paintings of Leigh Bowery from the early 1990's. In his introduction, to the volume Lucian Freud (Random House, 1996), Bruce Bernard notes that in the 1940's,œHe (Freud) seems to take the view that homosexuality in human beings extends the scope of the collective human imagination, and that a positive understanding of the queer sensibility is essential to people involved in art, even when they are not disposed that way in any emotional or erotic sense.

By substituting underground sensibility, a phrase that is culturally appropriate and accurately reflects life in early 21st century New York, for queer sensibility, we better understand Strosberg's quest in challenging his
talent and intellect by enlarging his field of vision and making art that is
more intimate and which has human emotion at its core. The remarkable paintings, portraits and drawings Strosberg creates using models bear witness to the fact that his artistic skills are more than equal to his emotional and psychological depth as a humanistic expressionist.

While many of Strosberg's models are habituee's of New York's nightlife, the fact is that most of his paintings are of beautiful young women, female amazons - fashion icons fearless in their stiletto heels and stunning dresses.
These are neither the obese women of Freud nor are they the bourgeois women or the uniformed female domestic servants of Soutine. Strosberg
is able to capture the bravura of these young women while also revealing the unspoken tension between their appearance and their underlying thoughts and feelings.

My preference has always been for artists who continually hone their talent and take risks, who do not become formulaic regardless of commercial success, and who, as Roberta Smith of The New York Times recently pined for, actually make things with their hands. Given his unique combination of talent, enthusiasm, sophistication, and fascination for his new surroundings, my suggestion is that we pay close attention to Serge Strosberg.


Stephen Rosenberg 2010

(Stephen Rosenberg, formerly of Rosenberg + Kaufman Fine Art, is a
long time New York art dealer, art advisor, appraiser and educator
now working privately in the primary and secondary art markets)

Serge Strosberg

Tags

See All Tags (3)