For more than fifty years, Roland Reiss has been a prominent presence in the Southern California art scene. His sculpture and painting have been exhibited internationally and written about extensively in art publications in the United States and Europe. During his career, he has been an influential educator.

This 260-page book is published in conjunction with the exhibition Roland Reiss: Sculpture and Painting presented at the Cal State Fullerton, University Lee and Nicolas Begovich Gallery. (November 8-December 11, 2014) The exhibition is the first survey of Reiss' work to include works from all the periods of his career, and this publication represents the most extensive examination of his work to date. It includes essays by Orange County Museum of Art chief curator, Dan Cameron; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, curator emeritus, Howard Fox; New Zealand art writer, Lita Barrie; and Begovich Gallery director and curator of this exhibition, Mike McGee.

Reiss began his career in the 1950s creating abstract paintings. In the1960s he was one of the first artists to experiment with resins and other plastic media. He is best known for his tableaus, which feature dollhouse-scale environments that address sophisticated issues about the human condition and social conventions. In the past two decades he has returned to painting. Initially these paintings were abstract. Since 2008, however, he has been painting a series of floral painting.

Reiss showed his work at Cirrus Gallery in the 1977 before he joined Ace Gallery in 1980. At Ace Gallery he had numerous one-person shows over the period of fourteen years, during which time that gallery represented him exclusively. In the course of his career, he has shown at Documenta (1982) in Kassel Germany and at the Whitney Biennial Exhibition (1975). Earlier, his work was traveled around the world by the United States Information Agency. He has exhibited in a one-person shows at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1977) and in an extensive retrospective exhibition at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (1991). In 2012, the Pasadena Museum of California Art mounted a large one-person show of his work from the 1970s and 1980s. Additional exhibitions include shows in Great Britain, South Korea, Belarus, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Mexico, China, Canada, Italy, Germany, Japan, and Taiwan. He is the recipient of four N.E.A. grants and of more than forty prizes and awards. His work is included in many public, corporate, and private collections, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Reiss studied at the American Academy of Art and at UCLA. He taught at UCLA, the University of Colorado, and Claremont Graduate University. In 2009 he received the College Art Association Award for the Distinguished Teaching of Art.