Jettli and Lotus Flowers

Theo Meier’s Jettli and Lotus Flowers exquisitely encapsulates the Swiss-born painter’s love for the tropics. Echoing the Primitivism of Paul Gauguin in Tahiti, Theo Meier depicts his third wife and Thai beauty, Jettli, admiring the lotus flowers blossoming from yellow-orange waters that unite the shades of nature with the sarong of the woman. Just as flowers were a common thread in his oeuvre, so too did the artist consistently return to vivid oranges, reds and pinks such as the ones seen here, to successfully evoke the scattering of sunlight that is unique to the tropics. Though painted circa 1976 in Thailand, the work is exemplary of the style that Meier developed during his two decades living in Bali prior to this. The canvas resonates with the sensuality of Southeast Asia, the floral ornamentation typical of that world and results in a dream-like composition that portrays the harmonious relationship between the figure and her surrounds. On this matter Meier once commented "I am less concerned with an imitation of Nature than with a representation of my impression of her, my concept, my dream; but abstract painting is not to my taste. My mind is too much involved with the senses, with the visual, not tied up with a depiction of reality, but purely as the concept of an object."