Joseph Meert (1905-1989) Belgian/ American

Joseph Meert (1905-1989) Belgian/ American
Joseph Meert (1905-1989) Ink and watercolor drawing on paper depicting courtoom scene and also painted on verso, signed lower right, piece measures 9 x 16 and 17 x 23 inches framed. A native of Brussels, Belgium, Joseph Meert immigrated to the U.S. with his family in 1910. He studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and with Thomas Hart Benton the Art Students League in New York City. After a year traveling and sketching in Europe, he returned to New York in 1931 and met Jackson Pollock, who was then studying with Benton at the League. The two artists remained close friends, and Meert has been credited with saving Pollock from freezing to death by rescuing him after he fell asleep in a snowdrift on a New York street.Initially a follower of Benton's American Scene aesthetic, in the mid 1940s Meert turned to abstraction, working in oils, watercolor, and stained glass. In 1946 he and his wife, Margaret, joined the Spiral Group, an organization of abstract painters, with whom they exhibited in the 1940s. Meert continued to exhibit in New York City in the 1950s, and in 1964 was awarded a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant for work in stained glass.In later years, medical and financial problems forced the Meerts to move to a nursing home in upstate New York. After his wife's death in 1980, Meert became a ward of the state and was moved to a facility where he was not recognized as an artist. Fortunately, thanks to the intervention of Pollock's biographer, Jeffrey Potter, Meert was awarded one of the first Pollock-Krasner Foundation grants, which enabled him to be moved to a more congenial residence and to work with art therapists to revive his creative life. From 1985-88 he completed a large series of abstract watercolors, of which this is an example. A selection of them was exhibited at the Pollock-Krasner House in 1994.
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