Works
Biography
Synthesis #31, 1982
Ida Rittenberg Kohlmeyer became one of the most prominent abstract artists in the South and started her career late, turning to art in her late thirties in search of a deeper meaning and purpose in life. She moved from an early figurative style in paintings of children to Abstract-Expressionism, influenced by a summer's study in Provincetown, Massachusetts with Hans Hofmann.
Kohlmeyer's life before art was relatively conventional, though her native creative instincts are clear in her feeling for literature. She was born in 1911 in New Orleans, Louisiana, gaining her B.A. degree in English literature in 1933 from Newcomb College. She then married a businessman and had two children.
Her artistic evolution began when she took local art classes, accelerating with her study of art at Tulane University in New Orleans, where she eventually received an M.F.A. degree in 1956. She was forty-five years old. That summer the fateful encounter with Hofmann occurred when she took his classes in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and his influence as an abstractionist was reinforced by Mark Rothko in 1957 when both he and Kohlmeyer were teaching at the Sophie Newcomb School in Tulane.
These men influenced her to change her style from representation to abstraction including the blurring of bands of color into large geometric shapes. In the 1970s, she developed a distinctive style using personalized symbols or hieroglyphs, which she continued to use in her work. Kohlmeyer's work would evolve to paintings utilizing grids, and abstract sculpture in a variety of materials from styrofoam to steel.
The artist had numerous exhibitions in galleries and museums including Gimpel Fils, London; the David Findlay Galleries, and Ruth White Gallery in New York City; New Orleans Museum of Art; William Sawyer Gallery, San Francisco; Indiana State University, Terre Haute; and Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina, among others.
Kohlmeyer's work is found in the collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art; National Museum of Women in the Arts; and National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C.; Jewish Museum, New York City; Milwaukee Art Center; Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Houston Museum of Fine Arts; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Kohlmeyer's life before art was relatively conventional, though her native creative instincts are clear in her feeling for literature. She was born in 1911 in New Orleans, Louisiana, gaining her B.A. degree in English literature in 1933 from Newcomb College. She then married a businessman and had two children.
Her artistic evolution began when she took local art classes, accelerating with her study of art at Tulane University in New Orleans, where she eventually received an M.F.A. degree in 1956. She was forty-five years old. That summer the fateful encounter with Hofmann occurred when she took his classes in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and his influence as an abstractionist was reinforced by Mark Rothko in 1957 when both he and Kohlmeyer were teaching at the Sophie Newcomb School in Tulane.
These men influenced her to change her style from representation to abstraction including the blurring of bands of color into large geometric shapes. In the 1970s, she developed a distinctive style using personalized symbols or hieroglyphs, which she continued to use in her work. Kohlmeyer's work would evolve to paintings utilizing grids, and abstract sculpture in a variety of materials from styrofoam to steel.
The artist had numerous exhibitions in galleries and museums including Gimpel Fils, London; the David Findlay Galleries, and Ruth White Gallery in New York City; New Orleans Museum of Art; William Sawyer Gallery, San Francisco; Indiana State University, Terre Haute; and Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina, among others.
Kohlmeyer's work is found in the collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art; National Museum of Women in the Arts; and National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C.; Jewish Museum, New York City; Milwaukee Art Center; Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Houston Museum of Fine Arts; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
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