Artist Database

Carl Walter Meyer was born in Aliwal North in the Western Cape. He studied painting at the University of Pretoria under Nico Roos and John Clarke, graduating with a degree in Fine Art in 1984. This was followed by a year under Michael Buthe at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, West Germany.

Meyer worked in a variety of media including oil, watercolour, acrylic, gouache, ink, wash, pen, pencil and various graphic media. He established himself primarily as a painter of the landscape, both with and without evidence of human occupation. Meyer was inspired by the beauty of remote places. He rendered the landscape as he observed it, and his compelling and evocative paintings, masterfully capturing the softness of the morning or evening light or the heat of the desert are both melancholic and poetic. He also produced portraits, still lifes, abstract images, and some sculptures in wood.

Walter Meyer won numerous awards, including the New Signatures first prize for painting in 1984, the South African Association of Artists (SAAA) first prize for painting in 1985, the New Signatures first prize for drawing in 1987 and the FNB Vita Art Now merit award in 1994.

He participated in several solo and group exhibitions locally and in Namibia, Europe and the United States of America, and he was recognised in Tuisveld, a memorial exhibition held at the William Humphreys Art Gallery in Kimberley, in 2018. Meyer’s work is represented in private and public collections throughout South Africa, including the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town.

Walter Meyer died prematurely at his home in Upington in 2017.