In Blue Heights: Galka Scheyer in Los Angeles

In 1933, German-Jewish art impressario Galka E. Scheyer commissioned architect Richard Neutra to build her a home in the Hollywood Hills. She turned it into a launchpad for European modern art on the US West Coast. Blue Heights: Galka Scheyer in Los Angeles tells her story through the lens of her house, as it is being restored.

As fascism rose in Europe, Scheyer championed the work of Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, and Lyonel Feininger (the "Blue Four")  bringing their art to U.S. audiences through exhibitions and lectures at a time when few people in the U.S. cared about abstract art from Europe. Her home became both gallery and refuge for modernist culture an ocean away from the political crisis consuming Europe.

Through rich archival material, interviews, and a documentation of the house's current restoration, the film traces Scheyer's story from past to present. It traces her path from her hometwon of Braunschweig to Ascona, Switzerland, from the Bauhaus in Weimar to New York, San Francisco and eventually to Los Angeles, and moves into the future, as her gallery home is currently being transformed into an artist residency, just as Scheyer had envisioned 80 years ago. In Blue Heights: Galka Scheyer in Los Angeles is a story of art, migration, and the legacy of Jewish émigrés who shaped American modern culture holding a striking resonance today.

This documentary is in the development phase. It is co-written and co-directed by Doris Berger and Benno Herz, who have been contributing to the awareness and recognition of Los Angeles’ rich legacy of European exiles and émigrés through exhibitions and programs for the past 10 years.

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