About our founder

Robert Zeller is an artist, writer, and curator based in Oyster Bay, on the North Shore of Long Island. He received a BFA from a joint program of the Boston Museum School and Tufts University and an MFA from the New York Academy of Art. He maintains a studio practice in Brooklyn, where he creates Surrealist-inspired work. He is the recipient of two Posey Fellowships and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. He has curated group exhibitions in New York City, and his art has been exhibited and collected in the United States, Europe and Mexico.

He has written two books for Monacelli Press, an imprint of Phaidon International, The Figurative Artist's Handbook (2017), and New Surrealism: The Uncanny in Contemporary Painting (2023). He contributed a chapter to Photography: Real and Imagined (2023), profiling the permanent collection of Surrealist photography of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, and has also written for The Brooklyn Rail and other influential art periodicals blogs and essays for artist’s catalogs.

In January 2009, Robert Zeller began developing a business plan for the Teaching Studios of Art® and the school opened for classes in June of that year. Over 15 years, the school has developed into one of the most ambitious programs for training artists in traditional techniques in the region: for kids, teens and adults and has earned a reputation for excellence.

After the publication of his first book,The Figurative Artist’s Handbook, Zeller taught drawing and painting workshops in both Rome and in Enniskerry, Ireland. With the publication of his second, he has been interviewed and quoted for articles in The New York Times and CNN. His books have been reviewed by Colossal, Hyperallergic, Juxtapoz, MutualArt and other online platforms.

New Surrealism: The Uncanny in Contemporary Painting

Monacelli/Phaidon Dec 2023

New Surrealism: The Uncanny in Contemporary Painting by Robert Zeller is a comprehensive survey of one of the most influential art movements of the last century that continues to be relevant to the world of contemporary art. It features an international selection of artists whose composition and studio practice are influenced by New Surrealism.

The book begins with a historical overview of Dada and the historical Surrealists, profiling most of the major artists involved, including Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Leonora Carrington, Leonor Fini, Salvador Dali, and then features an expansive survey of 29 contemporary artists, including Rosa Loy, Glenn Brown, Arghavan Khosravi and many others, who engage in New Surrealism’s seemingly unlimited variations of the movement’s original themes. Lastly, the book explores New Surrealism’s influence on contemporary composition and studio practice with contributions by 14 artists, including Inka Essenhigh, Ginny Casey, and Anna Weyant.

The Figurative Artist’s Handbook
Monacelli March 2017

An Authoritative, Comprehensive Guide for Contemporary Figurative Artists that begins with a condensed history of figurative art and then provides a step by step explanation of academic figure and portrait drawing techniques. Finally, Zeller explores the painting processes of some of the top contemporary figurative artists working today, showing their studio practices, from sketchbooks to color studies and finished paintings.

Illustrated with Zeller's own exquisite drawings and paintings as well as works by nearly 100 historical and contemporary figurative art masters, the handbook is also a treasure trove of the finest figurative art of the past and the present day. Included are Michelangelo, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Peter Paul Rubens, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Gustav Klimt, Edward Hopper, Andrew Loomis, Andrew Wyeth, Lucian Freud, Odd Nerdrum, Eric Fischl, Bo Bartlett, Steven Assael, John Currin, and many others.

Original and thoroughly modern in his approach, Zeller brings together three figure-drawing methods long thought to be at odds, synthesizing these seemingly incompatible techniques to achieve a cohesive and complete understanding of the human figure.

Coded Language - the Art of Hidden Narratives: A conversation and book signing

February 1, 2024 6–7:30 PM
Lyles & King
19 Henry St New York 10002

Lyles & King and Phaidon hosted a conversation between Robert Zeller, Ginny Casey, Inka Essenhigh and Kurt Kauper, inside Paulina Stasik’s solo exhibition Skin in the Game, to celebrate the publication of New Surrealism: The Uncanny in Contemporary Painting, Zeller’s sweeping survey of Surrealism and its legacy in contemporary art today. The book demonstrates the many ways in which Surrealism continues to be relevant today and it features an international selection of contemporary artists, including Jessie Makinson and Rosa Loy, who are among the gallery’s program. The discussion was based on one of the main themes of the book; the use of visual symbolism to convey hidden meanings that are sometimes personal to the artist, sometimes universal in scope. After the conversation, Zeller signed copies of the book, which were available for purchase.