Lot 37

The Elaine Horwitch Galleries, Arizona 1983
Private collection, Sydney

Ida Kohlmeyer (1912-1997) created a distinctive visual language of animated signs, rhythmic structures and exuberant colour. Although closely connected with Abstract Expressionism, she resisted remaining within the orbit of her celebrated mentors, transforming their lessons into a unique practice grounded in experimentation, intuition and play.

Born Ida Rittenberg in New Orleans to Polish Jewish immigrant parents, Kohlmeyer initially studied English literature at Newcomb College, graduating in 1933. A formative journey through Mexico the following year awakened her interest in the visual arts, although she did not commence formal artistic training until 1947, when she enrolled at the John McCrady School of Art. She subsequently returned to Newcomb College, completing her Master of Fine Arts in 1956 under Pat Trivigno. Reflecting on this concentrated period of development, Kohlmeyer identified "three really tremendous influences in my life: Hans Hofmann, Pat Trivigno and Mark Rothko."(1)

Immediately following her graduation, Kohlmeyer attended Hans Hofmann's summer school in Provincetown. The encounter proved transformative. Recalling her rapid conversion from figurative painting to abstraction, she declared: "Overnight I became an Abstract Expressionist." What liberated her was "the dynamism of the work, the felt quality, the emotion, the freedom..." (2) Hofmann's principles of spatial tension and colour remained foundational throughout her career.

Mark Rothko provided another important model when he taught at Newcomb during the late 1950s. Kohlmeyer absorbed his floating forms, veiled colour and softened edges, but became increasingly determined to establish her independence. She later explained: "I didn't want to be that dependent on anybody."(3) Her response was to move away from Rothko's expansive rectangles, introducing circles, hard edges and linear elements.

These signs became central to Kohlmeyer's mature work. Arranged within irregular grids or dispersed across vividly coloured fields, they suggest an invented alphabet without prescribed meaning. Kohlmeyer firmly rejected symbolic or narrative interpretations, explaining that she selected each form according to its compositional function, often using individual elements to direct the viewer's eye across the canvas. Her paintings instead operate through rhythm, repetition and variation, producing a visual language comparable to music.

Kohlmeyer remained in New Orleans despite encouragement to relocate to New York, teaching at Newcomb College from 1956 to 1964 and at the University of New Orleans from 1973 to 1975. Her first museum exhibition was held at the institution now known as the New Orleans Museum of Art in 1957, followed in 1959 by a significant solo exhibition at Ruth White Gallery in New York.(4) In later decades, she expanded her pictographic language into sculpture, including major public commissions such as 'Aquatic Colonnade' for the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas. Across painting and sculpture, Kohlmeyer united formal discipline with spontaneity, creating an art of remarkable vitality and unmistakable individuality.

Painted in 1982, 'Synthesis #B' belongs to a dynamic period of Kohlmeyer's career, when her distinctive vocabulary of signs, lines and chromatic forms had reached full maturity. Its title reflects her ability to unite the seemingly opposing qualities that shaped her practice: structure and spontaneity, discipline and play, abstraction and the suggestion of language. Works by Kohlmeyer are rarely encountered in the Australian market, making the appearance of Synthesis #B a rare opportunity to acquire a significant painting by an important American artist whose work remains unmistakably her own.

Wiebke Brix
Head of Art

(1) Berman A., "Oral History Interview with Ida Kohlmeyer, 17-20 May 1989," Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

(2) Ibid.

(3) Tulane University, Ida Kohlmeyer (NC '56), newcombalumnae.tulane.edu/node/3206 (accessed 25 August 2026)