Orrel P. Reed, painter, printmaker, scholar and author was born Cleveland, Ohio in 1921 and moved with his family to California about 1930.  During WWII he served in the US Army Air Corps in the Pacific theatre.  After the war Reed attended Yale University, receiving his BFA in 1949.  In 1950 he earned his MFA from UCLA and became a partner in the Landau Gallery in Los Angeles.  Reed became a private art dealer in 1959, specializing in Old Master prints and drawings.  An appraiser since 1960, Reed appraised the entire Frank Lloyd Wright art estate and the art collections of Edward G. Robinson, Vincent Price and Armand Hammer. Reed has also done appraisals for numerous major public collections.

A noted scholar and advisor, he authored "German Expressionist Art: The Robert Gore Rifkind Collection" and Rifkind referred to Reed as the "architect" of his collection.  In recent years Reed has focused of appraisals for architecture and is currently researching and writing a book on Eugene Masselink, the main designer for the Taliesin Fellowship.  Reed considers himself a painter and ceased printmaking in 1960 and has done little art since 1965.  The rarity of his prints is due to this and the destruction of his home and artwork in the 1993 Malibu fire in the LA area.  His documentation was lost as well but he does recall three solo exhibitions as well as a selection for one of the Sao Paolo Annuals, a drawing show at the New York Museum of Modern Art about 1954, and a group exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum.