Ferdinand Kulmer (Cap Martin, 1925 – Zagreb, 1998) was a Croatian abstract painter and teacher. He came from an old Croatian noble family of Austrian descent and trained in Budapest and Zagreb, where he worked in the studio of Krsto Hegedušić and then taught for many years at the Academy of Fine Arts.
His early paintings of the 1950s are semi-abstract compositions of still lifes and interiors with calligraphic brushwork. After a trip to Paris in 1955 he was influenced by Fauvism, especially Matisse and Dufy. By the end of the following decade he had adopted a heavily textured surface, close to completely abstract, such as the Brown Painting later bought by the Tate Gallery in London.
In the 1970s he returned to calligraphic lines and dancing forms, and in the 1980s he added mythological and heraldic motifs, echoing Art Informel and neo-expressionism. He also designed costumes for two films by Vatroslav Mimica and Veljko Bulajić. In 1990 he received the Vladimir Nazor Award for lifetime achievement, and his work remains a reference point for postwar Croatian painting.