Two documents on this website include the words of Richard and Emily Riemer. She recorded in “Vitae” (1949) the story of the couple’s struggle to elude detection in Nazi Germany; he was from a Catholic family of poor means, and she was from a Jewish family of wealth. He recorded in an interview (1997) some facts about their lives and his work. Neither document addresses the content of his paintings. They are “personal” he stated, and they “speak for themselves.”

This website introduces a sampling of the more than 400 works of Richard Riemer: paintings on canvas and panel, enamels, jewelry, and works of stained glass which separately display the richness and depth of his talent. Together his paintings “speak for themselves” the intensely personal story of the artist and the inspiration of his life.

That being said, to begin to explain his paintings, they are made from pieces of color, designed like stained glass, which Richard made for a living, and look their best when raised high, with good light, like a Cathedral window. Mr. Riemer took great pains in mixing his colors; he called it egg tempera, and mixed in various ingredients such as beer and urine.

The Riemers favorite places, before and after WWII, were the great museums of Europe, particularly Italy. Mr. Riemer seems to have been more influenced by Picasso than the other artists he studied. Unlike Picasso, Mr. Riemer and Emily lived the daily terror of WWII, life in Nazzi Germany, as a Jewish wife and polio stricken husband of a Jew, from start to finish.

Emily was Mr. Riemer’s guiding light; helping him, paralyzed, through the war and until his death. Richard designed and oversaw the construction of their final home in High Point, North Carolina. The house was built around a piano studio where Emily taught piano with the expertise of a concert pianist, her love of music and unique personality, on her Farny baby grand. On the other side of their collection of artbooks, Mr. Reimer painted in his art studio, unseen and unheard unless Emily needed his assistance with a particularly difficult young student.

Mr. Riemer’s art tells the story of his love and admiration for his wife Emily. It tells of his admiration for the physical, athletic side of humanity, and its relationship with a beautiful animal, the horse. It tells of the strange propensities of the human mind. And it shows, in a very restrained, modest yet intricate and detailed manner, their tale of survival and journey to America. It takes years of looking to pick out the different themes in Mr. Riemer’s art, and even then one can never be sure there’s not something more.