Processed by Donna Davis in 1983. Additional processing by Rivka Schiller in 2007 with the assistance of a grant by the Gruss Lipper Family Foundation.
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research© YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. All rights reserved.
Electronic finding aid was converted to EAD version 2002 by Yakov Sklyar in October 2006. EAD finding aid converted to ARCHON in 2013. Description is in English.
Title: Guide to the Papers of Lionel S. Reiss, (1894-1987 ), 1921-1952, RG 1160
ID: RG 1160 FA
Extent: 0.75 Linear Feet. More info below.
Lionel S. Reiss was a Polish-American artist. Traveled abroad in the 1920s to study different Jewish communities. The collection consists of 111 drawings, sketches, charcoals and watercolors included in 3 albums. In additional, there is a large framed drawing exhibited in the archives. There are also three large drawings stored in the flat file cabinet, drawer B10. The images are numbered consecutively from 1 to 111 in the collection inventory. Reiss’ own spelling of locality names and other expressions in the titles has been retained (e.g. “klessmer,” “Motelle,” “stetle,” “Lemberg”). The media include pastel and woodcut drawings, charcoal and pen and ink sketches, and watercolor paintings.
The collection consists of 111 drawings, sketches, charcoals and watercolors included in 3 albums. In additional, there is a large framed drawing exhibited in the archives. There are also three large drawings stored in the flat file cabinet, drawer B10. The images are numbered consecutively from 1 to 111 in the collection inventory. Reiss’ own spelling of locality names and other expressions in the titles has been retained (e.g. “klessmer,” “Motelle,” “stetle,” “Lemberg”).
The media include pastel and woodcut drawings, charcoal and pen and ink sketches, and watercolor paintings. The works range in size from 9 x 9 to 15 x 6 and depict scenes of Jewish life in various cities and shtetls of Europe, the Middle East, and the United States in the inter-war period. Among the towns and cities represented in Reiss’ artwork are: Amsterdam, Bialystok, Chelm, Frankfurt a/M, Jerusalem, Krakow, Lemberg, Lodz, Lublin, Paris, Safed, Tarnopol, Vilna, and Warsaw.
Themes include: individuals engaged in professional work or vocational trades (e.g., shopkeepers, shoe makers, knife grinders, tailors, carpenters, vegetable saleswomen, peddlers, water carriers, street fiddlers, klezmer musicians), religious settings and ritual contexts (e.g., men engaged in prayer and learning, in mitzvah dances, in handling the Torah scrolls), portraits (e.g., artist’s self-portrait, artist’s wife, children, elderly individuals, Chasidim, Talmud students, rabbinic figures), architectural structures and outdoor scenes (e.g., alleyways, courtyards, shop buildings, marketplaces, gates of Jewish quarter, synagogues, remains of Jewish quarter). Also included are depictions of life in Palestine and Israel: Sephardic, Yemenite, Kurdish, Iraqi, and kibbutz Jews.
Lionel Reiss was born in 1894 in Jarosław, Poland. His family immigrated to the U.S. in 1899 and settled in New York. Reiss began his career as a commercial artist working for advertising industry. In 1919 he traveled abroad for the first time, with the purpose of making “an ethnic study of the Jew”. This trip resulted in exhibitions in major American cities. In 1922, Reiss made a series of travels throughout Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and recorded the everyday life that he encountered in the Jewish ghettos of the aforementioned regions.
By 1930, Reiss had made a career-altering decision to leave the world of commercial art and devote his time to fine art. His first portfolio, My Models Were Jews: A Painter’s Pilgrimage to Many Lands was published in 1938. In 1952, when Reiss’ reputation as a genre painter was well established, the Reconstructionist movement, under the tutelage of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan and Rabbi Ira Eisenstein, provided him with an artistic mission grant that enabled him to spend six months traveling throughout Israel. In 1954 Reiss’ second book, New Lights and Old Shadows: New Lights of an Israel Reborn, Old Shadows of a Vanished World , which highlights 210 of his paintings, watercolors, drawings, and etchings from his 1952 trip to Israel, was published.
As immigrants to the United States, Reiss’ parents joined the ranks of other Eastern European Jews who were fleeing their native countries at the turn of the 20th century. Lionel Reiss settled on New York’s Lower East Side neighborhood and spent the majority of his life in the city. In the early 1920s he became a successful illustrator in the advertising industry. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, for whom he created the famous MGM lion, was one of his clients. Here, Reiss found himself among a cadre of Jewish immigrant artists: Max Weber (1881-1961), Mark Rothko (1903-1970), Louise Nevelson (1899-1988), Ben Shahn (1899-1969), Raphael Soyer (1899-1987), Moses Soyer (1899-1974), Isaac Soyer (1902-1981), and Chaim Gross (1904-1991). Nonetheless, Reiss’ work and documentation methods stand out as unique among this group, because he alone chose to return to his homeland for the purpose of bringing an awareness of Jewish shtetl life to a U.S. audience.
In the tradition of the Polish and Russian born Jewish photographers, Alter Kacyzne and Roman Vishniac, Reiss depicted Jewish communal life in Poland (and elsewhere) prior to World War II. The devastating effects of World War I could still be felt in the 1920s in the old Jewish quarters of Warsaw, Lodz, Krakow, Lublin, Vilna, Kovno, Paris, and Prague—all of which factor heavily in Reiss’ artwork. Reiss’ premonition that European Jewish culture was in jeopardy of vanishing led him to document and immortalize on paper that which he witnessed during his travels throughout Europe.
One of the central themes of Reiss’ art was that of every day street life, replete with its class distinctions and social strata. Later on in life Reiss’ themes drew more heavily from life in the United States, New York in particular. However, although the subject matter may have changed, the people and the street essentially remained the same. Among his more memorable works stand: “The Ghetto Gate of Lublin, 1922,” “Blessing of the New Moon, 1922,” “59th Street Series” (1946) of oil paintings, watercolors, and pen and ink drawings, his still lifes of Bucks County, Pennsylvania in the 1930s, seascapes of Gloucester, Massachusetts, a series of ink drawings that illustrated the poetry of Hayim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934), and a series of large murals, entitled “Genesis,” depicting biblical scenes. Reiss spent more than twenty years at work on these murals, and was still creating them at age 92.
During World War II, even prior to the time when anyone in the United States understood the real facts about the Nazi brutalities, Reiss created a composite of eight watercolors called “In Memoriam: The Millions of Innocent Victims of Nazi Warfare.” These images were published in The Menorah Journal in 1944, and in retrospect, appear mild in comparison to the truth of the day.
The collection is only a partial representation of Reiss’ greater body of work. Reiss’ work has appeared in exhibitions at venues across America: The Carnegie Institute, The Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles Museum Association, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Baltimore Museum of Fine Arts, Audubon Artists, American Watercolor Society, Museum of Modern Art, among others. His permanent collections may be viewed at Columbia University, The Jewish Museum (New York), the Jewish Theological Seminary (New York), the New York Historical Society, the Sinai Center of Chicago, the Skirball Center (Los Angeles), the Brooklyn Museum, the Bezalel Museum (Israel), Tel Aviv Museum, the Ain Harod Museum (Israel), and other such venues. Mr. Reiss died in 1988.
Alternate Extent Statement: 9 inches; 3 3" boxes
Access Restrictions:
Open to researchers.
For more information, contact: Chief Archivist, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011
email: archives@yivo.cjh.org
Acquisition Method: Collection was donated by Mr. And Mrs. Socolow and Mr. And Mrs. Jacques Stone in the 1980s.
Preferred Citation: Published citations should read as followes:Identification of item, date (if known); YIVO Archives; Lionel S. Reiss Collection; RG 1160; folder number.