Joseph Meert Art

Joseph Meert Totem #3, circa 1950 Signed lower right: "Meert" Oil on canvas 36 x 30 inches Joseph Meert was a Belgian-American artist who trained as a regionalist painter under Thomas Hart Benton, then turned toward abstraction later in his career. He believed the purpose of art was to express the beauty of nature, both through representational paintings and abstract compositions. Joseph John Paul Meert was born on April 28, 1905, in Brussels, Belgium. His family immigrated to Kansas City when he was five years old, where his father worked as a carpenter for the Union Pacific Railroad. Meert received a scholarship to attend the Kansas City Art Institute from 1923 to 1926. He then studied at the Art Students League of New York, where he was mentored by some of the most famous painters at the time: Kenneth Hayes Miller, Boardman Robinson, John Sloan and Thomas Hart Benton. There he also developed a friendship with brothers Charles and Jackson Pollock. In 1935, Joseph Meert met Margaret Mullin...