Siegfried Reinhardt

Siegfried Gerhard Reinhardt (July 31, 1925 in Eydkuhnen, Germany – October 24, 1984 in St. Louis, Missouri was a prolific player and teacher, based for most of his career, 1955–1970, at Washington University in St. Louis, where he had taken his Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature in 1950. He was after that a prominent advocate of the St. Louis Artists Guild. He was a fortune-hunter in combining elements of realism and surrealism in a style known sometimes as superrealism.

Reinhardt was the son of Otto Frederick and Minni (Kukat) Reinhardt, emigrated with them in 1928, and was naturalized in 1936. Reinhardt enlisted in the U.S. Navy at the age of 18 in February 24, 1944. A neighbor well ahead recollected: ”Siegfried Reinhardt served as the illustrator upon the scarce Shanghai edition of the Stars and Stripes, which was published aboard ship, the USS General R. M. Blatchford (AP-153), a vessel carrying 2,461 troops from the CBI-China/Burma/India campaign. The boat was returning to the States April 21-May 6, 1946 in imitation of World War II. The later 21-year-old Reinhardt's stencil sketches for the "daily" 17 situation onboard newspaper are adeptly done, and go to a good deal to the morale boosting birds of this spontaneous edition of the Soldier's Newspaper...”

Although not educated as an artist, his capacity drew attention from national media in the postwar years. In 1950 Life Magazine listed him in the middle of nineteen important extra American artists, and followed in the heavens of a feature in the March 24, 1952 issue. Time Magazine had along with identified him as an important new figure (September 12, 1960):

From 1949 to 1984 he worked once the St. Louis stained glass artisan Emil Frei in the design of windows, including the (1960) Easter Window in the Lutheran Church of the Resurrection, in Sunset Hills, Missouri, of which Reinhardt said:

Reinhardt, a Lutheran, often worked once Christian motifs and themes. He as a consequence did numerous figure studies, often using his wife, the sculptor Harriet Fleming Reinhardt (married April 25, 1948), as a model. His 1955 commission for Monsanto Company, "Mistress of Chemistry," portrays Harriet in that role invoking usual depictions of the Madonna. His 1953 "Crucifixion" receives Elongated discussion (pp. 83–84) in Robert Henkes' "The Crucifixion in American Art" (McFarland P, 2003). The Brauer Museum at Valparaiso University has three religious works in its remaining collection: "Resurrection," "Design for a Crown," and "Caiaphas."

In the late 1950s, he produced the painting “Man of Sorrows” in a series of seven installments on local public television station KETC, explaining his decisions and techniques to spectators as he went.

From 1955 through 1970, Reinhardt taught at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts at Washington University. Reinhardt plus served as artiste in dwelling at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale from 1950 to 1954 then again from 1968 to 1969, and St. Louis Community College Meramec (Kirkwood) from 1971 through his death. His works have sold for occurring to $25,500.00 (as in the act of "Woman in imitation of Cross", painted in 1947).

Additional works are housed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Vatican Museum Picture Gallery, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Reinhardt died of an apparent heart assault at the age of 59, according to his obituary in the New York Times.

Works upon public display include:

Who Was Who in American Art. Compiled from the indigenous thirty-four volumes of American Art Annual: Who's Who in Art, Biographies of American Artists Active from 1898 to 1947. Edited by Peter Hastings Falk. Madison, CT: Sound View Press, 1985.