REISS, WINOLD

born Sept. 16, 1886, Karlsruhe, Ger. died Aug. 29, 1953, New York, N.Y., U.S. German-born American artist, known for his strong and sensitive portraits of American Indians and African Americans. Reiss's father was a painter, and Reiss was deeply influenced by traveling through his native countryside with his father, who made portraits of German peasants. He attended art school in Munich, studying Jugendstil (Art Nouveau), but left for America in 1913 filled with romantic idealism about the Indians and the vast Western frontier. After finding work as an illustrator and designer, Reiss followed his dream to paint the Blackfeet Indians of Montana, whom he befriended in 1919. The pastel drawings he produced during this period are sensitive and sympathetic depictions that capture both individual traits and a more generalized quality of human dignity. Traveling to Mexico in 1920, Reiss made portraits of workers and revolutionaries there. In 1924 he was commissioned by Survey Graphic magazine to capture the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance with portraits of the residents of Harlem, New York City. Among his subjects were James Weldon Johnson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as ordinary people. Reiss was later commissioned by the Great Northern Railway to provide portraits of Native Americans for a series of calendars. Not only did his work serve to document and preserve peoples in cultural transition, but it actively cultivated respect for his subjects, elevating their distinctive qualities while illuminating their universality. Reiss is probably best known for his mural design for the mosaics of the rotunda in the Cincinnati Union Terminal, completed in 1933. He based his narrative on the history of transportation and its relation to Cincinnati, with a range of anonymous, multicultural portraits of travelers, industrial workers, and builders. In this and other works, his personal themes of human integrity and quiet heroism displayed in everyday work were enhanced by his decorative sense of colour and line and the monumentality of his presentation.