Ida Kohlmeyer

Ida Rittenberg Kohlmeyer ( born November 3, 1912 in New Orleans, † January 29, 1997 ibid ) was an American painter and sculptor from Louisiana.

Her parents Joseph and Rebecca Rittenberg were Polish Jewish immigrants who worked as a pawnbroker in New Orleans. Ida studied English literature at Tulane University (BA 1933) and was enthusiastic about Latin American art. In 1934, she married Hugh Kohlmeyer. In 1947 she attended the John McCrady Art School in 1947 and took classes at the Newcomb College at Pat Trevigno and Massachusetts with Hans Hofmann. In 1959 she had her first solo exhibition at the Ruth White Gallery in New York.

From 1973 she taught as an associate professor of art at the University of New Orleans.

Works by Kohlmeyer found, inter alia in the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington), the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the New Orleans Museum of Art show the influence of Mark Rothko and abstract expressionism.