Ida Barbarigo was born in Venice in 1920 as Ida Cadorin into a family of artists, architects, and sculptors. Although not encouraged by her father to become an artist, she realised from a young age that she had a gift for drawing and an eye for tones and shades. She wanted to become an artist and work in great freedom, not being obstructed by marriage or children. She transitioned away from architecture studies in order to study painting at Venice’s Academia di Belle Arti. Her work was influenced by many Renaissance painters, including Giotto and Cimabue, as well as the art of early civilisations and modern painters such as Piet Mondrian.
Her restlessness and curiosity led her to travel. In 1952, she moved to Paris, where she wanted to “unlearn” painting and forget academic teaching to create her reality, valid for itself, and able to communicate its world. Soon, she turned towards abstraction, using sinuous forms skillfully orchestrated against light, airy backgrounds, almost always in tone, and often infused with the rhythm of white brushstrokes suggesting the scintillation of light and the fluttering of leaves on the wind.