Serge Strosberg

Serge Strosberg is an American artist, born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1966. His father was a biotechnologist, who did pioneering research in gene therapy and obesity. The family lived in Boston, while his father completed a postdoc at Harvard. on a Fulbright Scholarship.

The family returned to Belgium, briefly, before moving to Paris. It was in Paris that Strosberg studied graphic design at the Academie Julian and focused on painting in oil and egg tempera. He also studied morphology at Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts. He began painting portraits of friends and neighbors while in Paris.

Strosberg began his career by writing and illustrating several childrens books. His first book, about Charles DarwIn, called In the Kingdom of Dragons, was very successful and translated to five languages.

His career as a portrait artist began when he met an art agent from London who got him portrait commissions. He began to travel from Paris to London. Strosberg says that he prefers working from live models rather than from photographs. If the person he has been commissioned to paint is not available, or is deceased, he often hires a live look-alike model to sit for the portrait.

Strosberg moved to New York in 2008 and began working form a studio in SoHo. He also has a studio in West Palm Beach and has submersed himself in the city’s history.

Before the pandemic, Strosberg visited the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach. He saw an old photograph of Henry Flagler and wondered what he would look like today. He painted a ‘modernized’ portrait of Flagler. One thing led to another, and Strosberg did a series of paintings, created from vintage photos, of Palm Beach residents.

The result was a show called Reimagining Palm Beach, shown at the Cornell Art Museum in Delray Beach in May 2024.

One of the portraits in the show is of Palm Beach architect Henry Mizner, painted with Johnnie Brown, Mizner’s pet monkey, on his shoulder. Mizner referred to Johnnie Brown as The Human Monkey, which is etched into Johnnie Brown’s tombstone, located in a courtyard on Via Mizner in Palm Beach.

The story of Johnnie Brown intrigued Strosberg and inspired him to paint a wonderful and witty series of works called Monkey Business in Palm Beach.

Serge Strosberg and his wife are the parents of twin boys. Strosberg lives and works in both New York and Palm Beach.

His works are in the permanent collections of The Shanghai Himalayas Art Museum in China, The Felix Nussbaum Museum in Germany and the Jewish Museum of Belgium. His portraits have been exhibited worldwide and his client list is prestigious.