ROBERT ZELLER founded The Teaching Studios of Art® in 2009. He received a BFA from the Boston Museum School and Tufts University and an MFA from the New York Academy of Art. He is the recipient of two Posey Fellowships, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and he has curated and/or exhibited at galleries in Los Angeles, Houston, Paris, and New York.

Zeller is a visual artist and writer. Following his bestselling The Figurative Artist's Handbook (2017), New Surrealism: The Uncanny in Contemporary Painting is his second book published by Monacelli Studio/Phaidon International. He contributed a chapter about Surrealist photography to the exhibition catalog Photography: Real and Imagined (2024), profiling the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, and has also written for The Brooklyn Rail and other influential art periodicals and blogs.