Sculptor, Coin Designer. Born 1899 in Essen, Germany. Died 1962.
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The German-born American sculptor Henry Kreis is notable in numismatics as being the designer of the 1935 Connecticut Commemorative half dollar, the 1936 Bridgeport Centennial Commemorative half dollar, Joseph Robinson on the Arkansas-Robinson half dollar, and several notable medals – including the Connecticut Tercentenary medal (1935) and the Wise and Foolish Virgins medal (1947).
Kreis also designed the Birth of a Nation monument at Fairmont Park, Philadelphia.
Henry Kreis won the Lindsay Morris Sterling Memorial Prize for Medals for his George D. Widener gold medal (Philadelphia, 1942) and the the “Artist for Victory” Exhibition $2,500 prize (1942). He also won the American Numismatic Society’s (ANS) Saltus Medal Award in 1948.
Kreis was a member of the National Sculpture Society, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Architectural League of New York, and the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, and taught at the Hartford Art School.
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