page_title: Tristan Meinecke
section_title: Visual arts
hierarchical_section_title: Tristan Meinecke / Career / Visual arts
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of Tristan Meinecke's split-level construction "Heterogeneous Icon."
context_page_description: Tristan Meinecke was an American artist, architect and musician who spent most of his life and career in Chicago. He was married to television and radio actress Angel Casey. His widely varied body of work explored abstract expressionism, cubism and Surrealism, and included the invention of the split-level painting technique. In collaboration with architect Robert Bruce Tague, Meinecke built and rehabilitated many properties in and around Lincoln Park, Chicago.
context_section_description: As a toddler, Meinecke would patiently await the arrival of the weekly coal delivery cart in order to sketch it.
  While still at the University of Michigan,several of Meinecke's watercolors caught the eye of then-Art Institute director Daniel Catton Rich, and one was included in the Art Institute of Chicago's Twenty-First International Exhibition of Watercolors in 1942. He was one of four University of Michigan students selected by Professor Jean Paul Slusser to complete a mural in what is now the Jean-Paul Slusser art gallery, depicting the four seasons.
  
  By 1955, Meinecke had already abandoned the watercolor medium and developed his own abstract style: a creative use of mixed media and intentional exploration beyond the boundaries of conventional composition, which Fred Sweet, then-curator of American painting at the Art Institute, praised as "very strong and powerful and dynamic". That year, one of his mixed-media compositions was included in the Art Institute's Chicago and Vicinity Show., which brought him further into the public eye. He returned to the Chicago and Vicinity show the following year. John Corbett (writer) would later describe the split-level form as follows: 
  One of the innovative aspects of the split-level is it had a solution to a basic problem, which had to do with how you create a sense of depth in a painting without resorting to conventional perspective techniques. How could you have a painting that felt like there was a sense of dimension at least in a cubist way? Split-level introduces literal dimensionality to paintings ... They have a real sense of depth; you can look through it.
  
  In 1957, Meinecke's split-level work "Heterogeneous Icon" achieved notoriety in the Art Institute's 'No-Jury' exhibition at Navy Pier: an article in The New Republic described it as "the only painting in the show that pushes back the frontiers of art". In an interview for a local newspaper, the artist explained that the construction "symbolizes much that is primitive and much that is sophisticated about man and his development."
   After that, he was invited to the 1958 No-Jury Exhibition and another Chicago and Vicinity show in 1959. He continued to exhibit in Chicago, including with the Renaissance Society, as well as in Michigan.
  In 1975, a chance encounter with Meinecke's son brought Chicago Surrealists Penelope and Franklin Rosemont into the artist's studio. This serendipitous meeting resulted in a lifelong friendship, and incidentally Meinecke's inclusion in the Chicago Surrealist Group's 1976 exhibition, entitled "Marvelous Freedom - Vigilance of Desire".
  Meinecke continued to paint until 2000, when carpal tunnel syndrome forced him to put down his brush. "Heterogeneous Icons", his last show while still living, was co-curated by John Corbett (writer) and experimental musician Hal Rammel, and held at the Art Institute's 1926 gallery in 2003.
  Exhibitions curated by his sons in 2014, a decade after his death, offered many works which had never previously been made available to the public.
caption: Photo of Tristan Meinecke's split-level construction "Heterogeneous Icon."
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