William Reimann

Reimann was born in Minneapolis, MN, to Hobart Reimann and Dorothy Sampson. He attended Yale College, graduating in 1957, and joined Yale Graduate School of Design, headed during that period by Josef Albers, for his MFA. In the spring of 1959, his work was selected for the MOMA Exhibition, Recent Sculpture USA. The exhibition toured the United States during the summer of 1959, with stops at the Denver Museum of Fine Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum, the City Art Museum of St. Louis, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.[2]

William P Reimann, 1986, Aerial VIII, plexiglas and steel, 762x762x520 cm Tropicana Corporate Headquarters, Bradentown, FL

William P Reimann, 1986, Aerial VIII (detail), plexiglas and steel, Tropicana Corporate Headquarters, Bradentown, FL

The "clean precision" of Reimann's work was well-timed for the "cool, streamlined beauty of postwar industrialism."[1] His work in Plexiglas from the 1960s has been described as taking a position "somewhere between the constructivism of Gabo's plastic sculptures and the organic abstraction of pieces by Arp and Brâncuși."[3] He found further success during the 1970s and 1980s in corporate commissions for companies like Shell Oil, Southwestern Bell, and Tropicana.

Reimann's works are in many media and forms, including two dimensional works on paper and mylar, and sculpture and furniture in glass, stone and wood.[4] His method of using steel and Plexiglas was highly labor-intensive. Reimann, like mentor Robert Engman, did not believe in the factory approach to sculpture, preferring to personally construct his pieces. Because of the physical demands of the hand labor, he would only accept commissions for high large-scale corporate pieces in Plexiglas on a limited basis.

In the 1980s, he turned from Plexiglas to stone, with his first public art commission, Arrival Stelae, a series of six granite bollards for the Arts on the Line project in Porter Square, Cambridge, MA.[5]

After a stint at Old Dominion University as part of the Arts Faculty, Reimann moved to Harvard University, where he taught basic drawing, design, and sculpture in the VES Department (1964-2003) as Senior Preceptor in Visual Studies. A demanding and engaging influencer as a teacher, his students and those he brought on as teaching staff include life coach Martha Beck, artist Lewis Bryden, animator Frank Mouris, and musician Dan Wilson.

Reimann is a lifetime rower since his schoolboy days in Pennsylvania. His competitive career ended in 2014, following diagnosis of a heart arrhythmia. National Champion in the Association Single in 1956 (a year in which Jack Kelly Jr. took the National Championship in the Senior Single), his numerous rowing achievements include a (since surpassed) Head of the Charles Regatta course record as the 1988 Champion, Grand Master single.[6]

• Strutt, Rachel (2012-06-29). "Different Strokes: When he's not rowing on the Charles, William Reimann is crafting an array of elaborate art and sculpture". Boston Magazine.
• Cusack, James (2021-10-17). "The Line: Champion Will Reimann Rows the Head of the Charles Regatta Course". Quitsa Productions.

• William Reimann (born 1935) - Organic Abstractionist / Constructivist Sculptor. In the permanent collection of MOMA[9] and the Whitney,[10] major exhibitions at same.[11] Retrospective of the artist at 72.[12]