Ida Kohlmeyer

Early life Kohlmeyer, née Rittenberg, was the daughter of Polish immigrants. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English at Newcomb College, the former women's coordinate college of Tulane University. After graduating from Newcomb, Kohlmeyer married Hugh Kohlmeyer, and the two took their honeymoon to Vera Cruz and Mexico City, Mexico in 1934. It was there that Kohlmeyer became inspired by and interested in the art of South and Central America.

Early art career, 1950s Kohlmeyer returned to Newcomb/Tulane in 1950 and completed a Master of Fine Arts in painting in 1956. She then studied at the painting school of the New York artist Hans Hofmann, known for his use of color, who influenced her in her decision to give up representational art for abstraction. Her early work was primarily in a gestural style influenced by Holfmann and other Abstract Impressionists, including Arshile Gorky and Mark Rothko, whom she met in New York.

She had her first exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art in 1957, and her first exhibition in New York City at the Ruth White Gallery in 1959. Kohlmeyer died on January 29, 1997, at Touro Infirmary in New Orleans.

In 2004, the Newcomb Art Gallery organized Systems of Color, an exhibition and accompanying book, dedicated to Kohlmeyer.

In 2016 her biography was included in the exhibition catalogue Women of Abstract Expressionism organized by the Denver Art Museum.

Cluster #13 from Kohlmeyer's Cluster series is on display at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY.