Ida Kerkovius came from the German upper class of Riga. In 1903 her parents allowed her to attend Adolf Hölzel's famous private painting school in Dachau. A trip to Italy had strengthened the 24-year-old's resolve to become a painter. After an enforced break of almost four years, Kerkovius resumed her studies with Hölzel in 1908 in Stuttgart, where Hölzel was now teaching composition. She was soon given a master's studio and became Hölzel's assistant.
While Hölzel's work makes one feel that a picture is being worked out, in her case the creations seem to leap from the brush with playful certainty. But appearances are deceptive: what appears as if unintentional is just as elaborately worked out. The influence of her comrade-in-arms on the path of liberating the pictorial elements, the influence of Paul Klee, whom she met at the Bauhaus in Weimar, may have led to a compositional style that spreads over the surface of the picture in greater unrestraint.