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. Striving to enhance his
knowledge, Strosberg went on to study privately with Jorge Hermle, a highly
respected German Expressionist artist and professor, who taught him the
ancient and difficult technique of painting with oil and egg tempera.
After several successful 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 as “an 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 don’t 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 already, in the 1940’s, “He (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 habitués 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 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.
– Essay by Stephen Rosenberg
