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."[4] 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.[5] 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.[6]
Teaching
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 (1968-2003) 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.
Rowing
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.[7]
Annual Exhibition 1966: Contemporary Sculpture and Prints (Dec 1966 - Feb 1967), Whitney Museum of American Art (1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1966)
Herbert and Nannette Rothschild Collection: an exhibition in celebration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding of Pembroke College in Brown University (1966) Brown University Art Museum, Providence, RI
William Reimann (born 1935) - Organic Abstractionist / Constructivist Sculptor. In the permanent collection of MOMA[10] and the Whitney,[11] major exhibitions at same.[12] Retrospective of the artist at 72.[13]