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. ==References==