Lot 160
Ida Rittenberg Kohlmeyer(American, 1912-1997)Composite No. 8
Ending from 24 November 2025, 13:00 EST
Online, Skinner Marlborough, MassachusettsUS$25,000 - US$40,000
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Jewel Bernier
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Claire Dettelbach
Cataloguer
Ida Rittenberg Kohlmeyer (American, 1912-1997)
Composite No. 8
signed and dated '1983Kohlmeyer' (lower right)
mixed media on canvas
74.9 x 167.6 cm (29 1/2 x 66 in).
framed 76.8 x 170.8 x 3.8 cm (30 1/4 x 67 1/4 x 1 1/2 in).
signed and dated '1983Kohlmeyer' (lower right)
mixed media on canvas
74.9 x 167.6 cm (29 1/2 x 66 in).
framed 76.8 x 170.8 x 3.8 cm (30 1/4 x 67 1/4 x 1 1/2 in).
Footnotes
Provenance
Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana.
The present private collection (acquired from the above, 2003).
N.B.
Ida Rittenberg Kohlmeyer was one of Louisiana's most important 20th-century artists. She was born and raised in New Orleans, where she spent most of her life . Kohlmeyer began painting relatively late, taking her first art classes while in her 30s at the John McCrady School of Art—founded by one of the leading figures of Southern Regionalism.
A transformative moment in her artistic development came during the summer of 1956 in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she studied under the influential abstract expressionist Hans Hofmann. Kohlmeyer later described this experience as feeling like "being freed from prison," marking her decisive turn toward abstraction.
Her encounter in the following year with Mark Rothko, who was a visiting artist at Tulane University, further shaped her artistic trajectory. Deeply inspired by Rothko's spiritual and emotional use of color and form, she produced a series of works reflecting his influence before fully developing her own distinctive voice.
By the late 1960s, Kohlmeyer had created a unique visual language—an intricate code of symbols inspired by Joan Miró and informed by her collection of pre-Columbian, Mexican, and African sculptures. Composite No. 8 exemplifies her Synthesis series of the early 1980s, characterized by large-scale canvases filled with bold, brightly colored forms that echo the Pattern and Decoration movement. The series embodies her belief in intuitive, semiotic artmaking: "a work progresses by unconscious impulses, one color calling for another, one shape after another".
Kohlmeyer's paintings radiate vitality and emotion. Through her patterns and joyful palette, she communicated an inner world of a wide spectrum of feelings onto canvas.
"I'm after the beautiful, not the pretty side of things. Art is too spiritual a matter for me to take lightly."
— Ida Rittenberg Kohlmeyer