Steven Assael was born in New York City in 1957.  A graduate of Pratt Institute, he focuses his work on the human figure, individually and in groups.  Assael balances naturalism with a romanticism that permeates the figures and surroundings of his paintings and drawings.  His figures are modeled in glowing relief by gentle beams of warm and cool light. October, 2010 to January, 2011, Steven Assael’s work was the subject of a one-person exhibition at the Naples (FL) Museum of Art.  Assael’s paintings were included in the exhibition “New Old Masters”, curated by Donald Kuspit, at the National Museum in Gdansk, Poland in 2006.  A retrospective exhibition was held at the Frye Art Museum, Seattle (WA) in 1999.  Single-person exhibitions of works by Steven Assael have also been featured at the Cress Gallery of Art at the University of Tennessee, Lowe Gallery (Atlanta, GA) and Ann Nathan Gallery (Chicago, IL).  His work has been exhibited at The Arkansas Arts Center, The New York Academy of Art and The Arnot Art Museum (Elmira, NY), and is in the permanent collections of The Hunter Museum of Art (Chatanooga, TN), The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art & Design (Kansas City, MO), The Columbus Museum of Art (GA) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY). Steven Assael joined Forum Gallery in 1998.