John Meyer

John Meyer is one of South Africa’s leading contemporary realists. Born 1942, Meyer has put his indelible stamp on the genres of landscape, portraiture and narrative art. Meyer became a professional painter in 1972. Since then he has travelled extensively, painting landscapes from Nevada to Norway. He has exhibited consistently in the United States, Europe and South Africa, developing an international profile that few South African artists have achieved. Over the years he has become a court painter to the rich and powerful, and his subjects range from Nobel Peace Prize winners Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk, to renowned concert pianist Vladimir Horowitz. Since the early 1990’s Meyer has concentrated almost exclusively on what he calls the narrative genre – enigmatic figures caught in emotional ambiguities – representing a new direction to his art.