Ida Kaufman Feerer (1911-2001) American, Oil on Panel. Cubist style feminine figure reclining thoughtfully in the horizontal image. Signed bottom right. Label on back with title: "Springtime - Catalina." 

Overall: 42 X 21 in. 

Sight: 34 1/2 X 13 5/8 in. 

Depth: 1 3/4 in. 

#3814 . 

Ida Kaufman Feerer (nee Ida Wineman Snewind) was born in 1911 in Kokomo, Indiana. Her parents were Jewish immigrants who moved throughout the Midwest while she was young, eventually settling in Zanesville, Ohio. She broke racial and religious barriers by attending Muskingum College, a private Presbyterian university in nearby New Concord, where she studied education in 1928. It was here that she discovered a passion for art and met her first husband, a surgeon named Herman D. Kaufman, with whom she had a daughter. She spent the next twenty years as a housewife, taking art classes from time to time at the Zanesville Museum of Art under the director, Dr. Charles Dietz, who heavily influenced her style. After her daughter was grown she devoted herself to art full-time, focused on landscapes and experimenting with gouache and watercolor. Her works were cubist-inspired abstract depictions of the people and the unique shape of the city of Zanesville, and were a prominent part of the Annual Arts and Craft Show throughout the 1950s and 60s. Herman died unexpectedly from a heart attack in 1969, and Ida decided to leave Ohio to cope with the grief. She traveled west for a time before settling in Laguna Hills, California. She began to paint again, and met another doctor, Donald J. Feerer, who she married in 1973. The next twenty years were spent exploring primarily figural works and portraits, and after she and Donald divorced in 1991 she moved to La Jolla, where she began to paint landscapes once again. She passed away at her home in 2001, with her work in museums and private collections throughout California and the Midwest.