Joseph Meert, an abstract expressionist and friend of Jackson Pollock actually saved Pollock’s life one night. On a sub-zero winter night of 1943 or 1944, Pollock came to visit Meert at his apartment, however Pollock had passed out drunk in a snowdrift and would have frozen to death had it not been for Meert.
In the 1920s, he was a resident of Kansas City, Kansas living at 1014 Tenny Street and taught at the Kansas City Art Institute from 1935 – 1941. Despite his extensive exhibition record, Meert never found financial success. In 1980, after the death of his wife, his medical and mental condition began to deteriorate, but he was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and became a ward of a state nursing home. In 1985, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation awarded a grant to have him transferred to a better facility in Cheshire, CT, where he received art therapy treatment and benefited from this until his death in 1990.
Credits:
Falk, P. Who Was Who in American Art
Exhibition Record (Museums, Institutions and Awards):
Midwestern Artists’ Exhibition, 1927; Midwestern Artists Exhibition, 1936; 1st New York Exhibition 1949.
