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 lo...