[3] The Munich art historian Franz Stadler encouraged him to buy pictures by French Impressionists, but only first-class works.

In 1926, Mr. and Mrs. Mayer had the Teatro San Materno built for the dancer Charlotte Bara in Ascona.

Mayer was also otherwise active as a patron and collector of art, acquiring paintings by Cézanne, van Gogh,[4] Renoir, Matisse and Picasso, among others, primarily in the 1920s.

In a hotel built especially for this purpose in Ascona, he hosted numerous writers and artists, especially emigrants, such as Holitscher, Ehrenstein, the Fritsch couple, Else Lasker-Schüler and many others.

[10] At the beginning of World War I, Mayer, as a German, had to leave Belgium; he went to Berlin and in 1916 to Zurich, then to Ascona.