IDA LAURETTA GEYLER [TOLLENGER] - Fine Winter Watercolor Landscape Painting. Signed. Original framing. Well listed Artist.

size: 14 x 21 matte, 20.75 x 27.75 outside frame). ASKart: Ida Lauretta Geyler (1905 - 2005) was active/lived in Ohio, New York / Japan. Ida Geyler is known for Painting, design, Illustration, printmaking, crafts and teaching. IDA LAURETTA GEYLER (December 17, 1905 – May 21, 2005)A.K.A. “Ida L. Geyler,” “Ida G. Tollenger”Painter in oil, watercolorist, illustrator, printmaker, craftsperson, educator. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of Ida Marie Sempsrott (1875 – 1957) and Louis Geyler (1877 – 1951). She was raised in Cincinnati, where her father worked as a pattern maker for a brass factory.Ida Geyler began her studies at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and at the University of Cincinnati, where she studied under several Cincinnati luminaries, including John Ellsworth Weis (1892 – 1962), Herman H. Wessel (1878 – 1969) and Frank H. Meyers (1899 – 1956). This was followed by later studies in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under George Harding (1882 – 1959), Leon Kroll (1884 – 1974), Jonas Lie (1880 – 1940) and Roy C. Nuse (1885 – 1975). During 1930-31, Geyler participated in the summer school of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts at the Stratford College art studio near Chester Springs, Pennsylvania.Her works began popping up in exhibitions in Cincinnati in the latter part of the 1920s. In 1928 her mural study Spring was illustrated in the Cincinnati Enquirer and won a prize at the Art Academy of Cincinnati’s “Future Follies” ball: Spring, the title of Ida Geyler’s mural, presents the season of 1978 in a most joyous, expressive fashion. Two extremely eccentric figures dance amid exotic, waving flowers; strange blue birds and giant black butterflies fly through the oddest shaped foliage on the oddest shaped trees imaginable. Unfamiliar as these forms are to eyes accustomed to the natural form today, we do not react to the joyous mood of Miss Geyler’s mural and admire the pattern in the design of the field and border.”By the early 1930s, Geyler was a regular exhibitor with the Crafter’s Shop (A.K.A. the Crafters Company) in Cincinnati, and in 1932 her craftwork was noted as having provided “…outstanding contributions to [their] exhibit.” She also exhibited her oil paintings in the region, including at the 1933 Juryless Show at the Cincinnati Art Museum, where a reviewer noted: “Some of the most striking and successful canvases are by the young painters the most outstanding of which [includes]… ‘On the Parkway,’ a lovely landscape full of a charming spirit, by Ida Geyler.” Another newspaper article called her submission “…a fine piece of alert painting.”As the Great Depression continued, by 1934 Geyler was working with the Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) as part of the Federal Art Project (F.A.P.), where she began exhibiting her airbrush work that year. She would become known for that work, particularly her airbrush prints, and would teach on the subject repeatedly from the mid-1930s through the mid-1940s, including at the Cincinnati Art Museum. That same year (1934), her works traveled to Huntington, West Virginia, where they were exhibited at The Little Gallery as part of a Cincinnati artists graphics traveling exhibition.Geyler was a member of and served on the boards of a number of local art groups in Cincinnati. By 1939 she was serving as president of the Cincinnati Woman’s Art Club and in 1940 she served on the executive committee for the American Art for the American Home exhibition, which was to be held at the Taft Museum in Cincinnati. By the early 1940s Geyler was an officer of the Cincinnati Association of Professional Artists, where she exhibited regularly.Ida Geyler left Cincinnati for New York sometime in the early-to-mid-1940s, where she met her future husband, William F. Tollenger (1905 – 1994). A narcotics agenda from Brooklyn, New York, they married in 1946 and not long after were off to Japan, where he was assigned as chief narcotics agent to General MacArthur’s administration. During her time there she took up watercolor painting and in 1950 her work was accepted for the Nitten Exhibition at the Metropolitan Ueno National Art Gallery in Ueno Park, Japan. Her works were also shown in Bangkok, Thailand, perhaps during this same period. Following her return to America, Geyler’s paintings of Japan were exhibited in a 1952 solo at Cincinnati’s Closson Gallery.Over the next fifteen years or so, she and her husband moved all over the country due to the nature of his work. They ended up in St. Louis, Missouri (c. 1953) and later Hawaii for a period, where she exhibited her artwork in Kailua and where she taught at the Hawaiian Windward Artists Guild. Other places where she exhibited her works during this period include in Texas (Houston and Galveston), Chicago, Illinois (where she served as the chairman-director of the Triangle Art and Community Center in Old Town) and Alexandria, Virginia, where she and her husband were living by the late 1960s. During her time in Virginia, she won the Gilham and Marshall Award (1969). Not long after, she followed her husband to Phoenicia, New York, where she quickly became part of the local arts scene. Eventually she returned to Cincinnati.Ida L. Geyler died in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Saturday, the 21st of May 2005 at the age of ninety-nine years. Her services were held locally, and she was interred at Arlington Memorial Gardens in Mount Healthy, Ohio. In addition to her many local memberships noted above, Geyler was a member of the American Water Color Society and the National Association of Women Artists.Though there are undoubtedly other exhibitions in which Geyler participated, those presently known include the following: Art Academy of Cincinnati’s “Future Follies” Ball, Cincinnati, OH, 1928 (prize); Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Traveling Exhibition, Stratford College, Chester Springs, PA, 1931; American Art Exhibition, Cincinnati Museum of Art, Cincinnati, OH, 1932; Woman’s Art Club Exhibition, Cincinnati, OH, 1932, 1936 (probably), 1939, 1940, 1941, 1943; The Crafters Shop, Cincinnati, OH, 1932; Juryless Exhibition, Cincinnati Museum of Art, Cincinnati, OH, 1932 (probably), 1933; Crafters Company, Columbus, OH, 1933; National Exposition of Women’s Work, Music Hall, Cincinnati, OH, 1933; Crafters Company Holiday Exhibit, Cincinnati, OH, 1933, 1934 (prize) 1936, 1938, 1939, 1941, 1942; Cincinnati Museum of Art Holiday Exhibit, Cincinnati, OH, 1933-34; Federal Public Works Project Exhibition, Cincinnati Museum of Art, Cincinnati, OH, 1934; Crafters Company Exhibition at the Ohio State Fair, Columbus, OH, 1934; Crafters Company at The Little Gallery, Huntington, WV, 1934; Open Air Art Exhibition at Fountain Square, Cincinnati, OH, 1935; Closson Gallery, Cincinnati, OH, 1936 (solo), 1952 (solo); Clovernook Home Country Fair Benefit Exhibition, Cincinnati, OH, 1936, 1940; Cincinnati Association of Professional Artists, Cincinnati Museum of Art, Cincinnati, OH, 1937; Ohio Print Makers’ Exhibit, Cincinnati Museum of Art, Cincinnati, OH, 1937; Artists and Craftsmen of Greater Cincinnati Exhibition, Cincinnati Museum of Art, Cincinnati, OH, 1939 (probably), 1940, 1941, 1942; Crafters Exhibition at the Cincinnati Museum of Art, Cincinnati, OH, 1940; Cincinnati Association of Professional Artists, Hotel Netherland Plaza, Cincinnati, OH, 1941; The Art Mart, Cincinnati, OH, 1941 (twice); Cincinnati Artists Exhibition, Ball State University, Muncie, IN, 1941; Crafters Art in Industry Exhibition, Cincinnati Museum of Art, Cincinnati, OH, 1942; Studio Exhibition with Kenneth Ozier, Cincinnati, OH, 1943; Metropolitan Ueno National Art Gallery, Ueno Park, Japan, 1950; Phoenicia Library, Phoenicia, NY, 1970 (solo); R.S.E.C. Rexmere Gallery, Stamford, NY, 1971. There were also a number of other exhibitions in Illinois, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, etc., which are currently undocumented.Ida Geyler’s works are currently known to be in the following public collections: University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH. Her works also reside in private collections throughout the United States.