Reitzenstein was born in
Uelzen, Germany; he and his family emigrated to Canada in 1956. He studied at the
Ontario College of Art in Toronto (1968-1971). He has had decades of experience as a Canadian artist including over 100 solo exhibitions, commenting through his work on the natural environment and its clash with civilization. In 1993, Ted Fraser curated
Reinhard Reitzenstein: The World Tree for the
Confederation Centre Art Gallery and Museum in Charlottetown. His visual art can be seen around Canada, with notable works such as
Island, River, Sentinels (2003–2004) located in the Ambassador's Court Garden at Rideau Hall in Ottawa and
Festival Walkway (2003) located in a walkway at 10 Bellair Street between Bloor Street and Cumberland Avenue in Toronto. In 2017, for the
Bonavista Biennale, he created a site-specific sculptural installation of an inverted tree piece,
Waiting/Watching/Waiting that took an entire village of helpers in Newfoundland to make. The trees, carefully selected for their height and strength, stripped of their bark and sealed with red ochre and linseed oil were inverted into deep holes that had been dug into a rocky causeway. Their roots were up top like antennae. In 2019, he created a complex tree installation which included large scale woodcut plates and prints at the
Buffalo, New York Arts Studio. His work is in numerous public collections, among them the
National Gallery of Canada, the
Art Gallery of Ontario, the
Canada Council Art Bank, Art Gallery of Hamilton,
University of Toronto,
Memorial University of Newfoundland,
Confederation Centre of the Arts, the
Province of Ontario, and the
University of Western Ontario. Reitzenstein has been an instructor in sculpture and interdisciplinary studies at the
University of Guelph (1980-1998), at
Brock University (1991-1994),
Queen's University (1997), the
Toronto School of Art (1998-2000) and
Sheridan College (2000). He has served as the Head of the Sculpture Program in the Department of Art at the College of Arts and Sciences at the
University of Buffalo in Buffalo since 2000. His work is represented by the Olga Korper Gallery, Toronto and Indigo Art, Buffalo, New York. == References ==