Joseph Meert

Joseph Meert (1905 - 1989) was an American artist who created three New Deal post office murals.

Biography

Meert was born in 1905 in Brussels, Belgium. As a child he emigrated with his family to Kansas City, Missouri, US. He studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and then Art Students League of New York. His teachers included Thomas Hart Benton, Kenneth Hayes Miller, Boardman Robinson, and John Sloan.

While at the Art Students League, Meert became friendly with Jackson Pollock. The friendship continued into the 1940s, when Meert retrieved a drunken Pollock from a snow bank into which he had fallen, unconscious.

Meert married fellow artist Margaret Mullin (1910–1980) in the 1930s. The couple located in Kansas City where Meert taught at the Kansas City Art Institute from 1935 through 1941, along with his former teacher Thomas Hart Benton. In the 1930s Meert was associated with the Ste. Genevieve Art Colony in Missouri.

In 1941 the Meerts returned to New York, and by 1946 Meert's style transitioned into abstract art.

Meert's mental health deteriorated in his later years. In 1986 the Pollock-Krasner Foundation provided funds for Meert's care at a facility in Cheshire, Connecticut. National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.