Though widely celebrated for his miniature tableaux, Reiss was first and foremost a painter whose more than sixty-year career left an indelible mark on the Los Angeles and Southern California art scenes. He was included in the 1975 Whitney Biennial and Documenta 7 in 1982, and received fourteen solo museum exhibitions over the course of his career, including The Dancing Lessons: 12 Sculptures (1977) at LACMA. He also received survey exhibitions at the Pasadena Museum of Contemporary Art (2011–2012) and exhibited at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. A retrospective of his work was mounted at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in 1991.

Reiss studied at the American Academy of Art, Mount San Antonio College, and UCLA, graduating with an MA in 1957. He taught at the University of Colorado, UCLA, and Claremont Graduate University, where he chaired the art department for thirty years. In 2009, he received the College Art Association Award for Distinguished Teaching of Art. At CGU he held the Benezet Chair in the Humanities, and in 2010 an endowed chair in art was established in his name. He was also director of The Painting’s Edge residency at Idyllwild Arts.

Reiss received four NEA grants and numerous prizes and awards. His work is held in many significant public and private collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hammer Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Palm Springs Art Museum, UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art, Laguna Art Museum, Benton Museum of Art, Claremont Lewis Museum of Art, and Oakland Museum of California.

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