Bernard Stern was born in Brussels, Belgium on 7 December 1920 to an English mother and father of Russian origin and later married an American. He studied first at the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts (1935-37) and the Antwerp Academie (1937-39), before moving to London in 1940 and studying briefly at St Martin's School of Art. He later lived in New York and then France. He exhibited widely in mixed international shows in France, Switzerland Belgium and America and held solo shows including at the Archer Gallery (1970), David Paul Gallery, Chichester (1975), Tampa Bay Art Center, Florida (1977), Carlton Gallery, New York (1977; Camden Arts Centre (1981), Galerie Isy Brachot, Paris (1983), and elsewhere. He died in Marseilles, France in 2002. His work is in many international collections including the Goethe Institute, London; Sheffield Museum and Chichester in the UK; Art Gdansk, Poland; Musée Petit Palais, Geneva; Collection d’Art Moderne de la ville de Paris; Foundation Pompidou, Paris; Musée d’Art Moderne, Ostende, Belgium; and the Museum of Modern Art, Chicago.