Guenther Riess

Guenther Riess was born in Wels, Austria on February 20, 1945 and died on January 4, 2015 in Erie, Colorado.  He attended the Chouinard Art Institute, in Los Angeles, CA after moving with his family to the United States. Riess was inspired by buildings under construction for the majority of his artistic career. He made three-dimensional models of construction sites with mixed media; including paint, wood and paper. He did not intend for his works to be representational, but instead hoped to bring out connotations of construction in the viewer. He worked from photographs of sites rather than visiting himself. Riess also did not create his models to scale, but instead focused on the importance of each aspect of the building.