Conrad Meili
Born in 1895.
Died in 1969.
He is reported to have been a pupil of Ferdinand Hodler; this detail is retained here with the customary qualification inherent in biographical notices.
At the beginning of his career, he worked in modest formats and with traditional subjects: small landscapes, still lifes and nudes. Active in fine-art circles in the late 1920s, he joined the Société nationale des beaux-arts and settled in Paris from 1930 onwards.
In Paris, he met the novelist Kikou Yamata, whom he married in 1932, and in 1939 the couple left for a journey to Japan that was prolonged following the outbreak of the Second World War. During his stay in Japan, his work is described as tinged with ukiyo-e influences; he produced a large number of works there and taught many students.
For a documentary synthesis and biographical contextualisation, the principal source cited is the article by Dallais and Mottini (2007) devoted to the couple Conrad Meili and Kikou Yamata.
