Richard Neutra's Galka Scheyer House Film Screening and Discussion
Galka Scheyer (1889–1945) was a German-American painter, art dealer, collector, and pioneer of modern art, best known for championing the artist group “The Blue Four,” consisting of the artists Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, and Paul Klee. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Braunschweig, Germany, Scheyer abandoned her training as a painter after meeting the artist Alexei Jawlensky in 1916, instead becoming an influential art impresario who united “The Blue Four.” She left Germany in 1924 and moved to California to promote modernist art in the United States, where her exhibitions and lectures helped establish California as a hub for modern art.
In 1933, renowned architect Richard Neutra built her a house in the Hollywood Hills, which not only served as her private residence, but also as a salon and gallery. Famous intellectuals and artists, such as musician John Cage, László Moholy-Nagy, director of the New Bauhaus in Chicago, filmmaker Maya Deren, and prominent German-speaking film émigrés such as Fritz Lang and Josef von Sternberg would frequent Scheyer’s salons, overlooking the city while listening to her lectures on European art.
When the house came up for sale last year, a German art collector purchased it with the idea to transform it to into a vibrant space for arts and culture again, just as Scheyer had envisioned in the 1930s.
To celebrate the centennial of Richard Neutra’s arrival in Los Angeles and the reopening and restoration of the Galka Scheyer House, Raymond Neutra and renowned journalists Alex Ross (The New Yorker), met for a conversation at the house. The film traces both Richard Neutra’s path to Los Angeles and his impact on Southern California’s architecture, as well as Galka Scheyer’s important role as an influential art impresario and the history of her house, showcasing rare archival footage and impressions of the house today.
Join us for a premiere screening of the film (watch trailer here), followed by a conversation between architectural historian Barbara Lamprecht, PhD and Frank Escher & Ravi GuneWardena, Principals at EscherGuneWardena Architecture, who will be restoring the Scheyer House.
Presented by the Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design and Blue Heights Arts & Culture. Street parking only. We regret this event is not ADA accessible.
