1879 | born in Riga |
1903 | studies at the art school of Adolf Hölzel in Dachau |
1908-11 | studies at the art academy in Stuttgart with Adolf Hölzel |
1911-14 | assistant to Adolf Hölzel |
1920-23 | Studies at the Bauhaus with Johannes Itten, Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky |
1925 | Member of the Berlin "Novembergruppe |
1930 | first solo exhibition at the Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart |
1935-39 | extensive travels through Central and Eastern Europe |
1950 | Founding member of the Künstlerbund Baden-Württemberg 1954 |
1958 | Awarded the title of professor |
1962 | Honorary member of the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart |
1963 | Honorary board member of the German Artists' Association |
1970 | Large traveling exhibition of the State Gallery |
1970 | died in Stuttgart |
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.