Hans Meyer-Kassel: Artist of Nevada

The art exhibition “Hans Meyer-Kassel: Artist of Nevada” will be on view at the Nevada Museum of Art (NMA) in Reno from February 24 through September 2, 2018.  Over seventy paintings, drawings and artifacts from private and institutional collections will be presented. This is going to be the first comprehensive survey of the late-Imressionist artist who portrayed everything from dignities to ships and glaciers. Visitors will be inspired by Meyer-Kassel's love for northern Nevada expressed on canvases capturing scenes and landscapes of Reno-Tahoe, Pyramid Lake, Walker Lake and the Ruby Mountains. The show also includes some of his artwork from Germany, Norway and New York.

Panel partition of a replication of a Meyer-Kassel painting at NMA entrance

About Hans Meyer-Kassel

Born as Hans Meyer in Kassel, Germany, on March 8, 1872, Meyer immigrated to the United States in the early 1920s and moved to Nevada in the mid-1930s. Here, he died in northern Nevada's Genoa on August 30, 1952. 

Hans Meyer began his career as a painter of portraits, landscapes and still lifes in Kassel and Munich. Meyer's encounter with prominent European dignitaries, who he painted, and his growing artistic reputation caused his native Hessian city of Kassel to grant him the honor of  appending the city's name to his own. Such, Meyer's common name—“Hans” and “Meyer” belong to the most frequent first and last names, respectively, in Germany—became a distinctive moniker: Hans Meyer-Kassel. The writing Meyer-Cassel, using an older spelling of the city name (see “Fascinated by the word Kassel”), can also be found. Since the 1950s Kassel is known for the Documenta, a contemporary art event taking place every five years and populating the cityscape with sculptures such as Frame Construction and Man Walking to the Sky.

Between his times in Germany and Nevada, Hans Meyer-Kassel enjoyed sceneries and success on both sites of the Atlantic Ocean. My favorite episode in Meyer-Kassel's life is his artist-style exploration of Iceland and Norway (including the Lofoten Islands and remote Spitzbergen), where he painted harbor towns, floating ice and glaciers. In 1931, Meyer-Kassel had a one-person exhibition of his artwork at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. During the last 16 years of his life, his terrain for impressionistic views was the American West, including the landscape of northern Nevada between the Ruby Mountains and the Carson Range.

Monument Dedication in Genoa

A recent newsletter of the Nevada Museum of art announces a special event on Saturday, May 19, at 1 pm, during which a permanent memorial to Hans Meyer-Kassel, and his beloved wife Maria, on the grounds of the Genoa Courthouse Museum in downtown Genoa is planned.

Display of books at museum bookstore

Reference and more to explore

[1] Hans Meyer-Kassel: Artist of Nevada. Link: https://www.nevadaart.org/exhibition/hans-meyer-kassel-a-nevada-artist/.
[2] Jack Bacon (Editor/Publisher): Hans Meyer-Kassel: Artist of Nevada. Jack Bacon & Company with the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Nevada 2018.
[3] Hans Meyer-Kassel. Online Nevada Encyclopedia. Link: http://www.onlinenevada.org/articles/hans-meyer-kassel.
[4] Hans Meyer-Kassel. Wikipedia (in German). Link: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Meyer-Kassel.