2025 · The Galka Scheyer House
Perched high in the Hollywood Hills, the Galka Scheyer House is more than a striking example of modernist architecture — it is a hidden portal into an important chapter of L.A.’s cultural history. This first-ever documentary on Galka Scheyer (1889–1945) tells the story of her life as an art impresario, curator, artist, and modernist trailblazer, a visionary who introduced the U.S. to the artist group “The Blue Four,” consisting of Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, and Paul Klee, and their concepts of abstract modernist art. Scheyer left behind her own painting career to become a tireless advocate for European modernism, forging new artistic terrain in California. When Richard Neutra — already a star of modernist architecture — built her a spectacular Hollywood Hills home and gallery in 1934, it became a vibrant gathering place for some of the era’s most radical minds such as John Cage, Maya Deren, and László Moholy-Nagy, as well as many other artists who fled Europe’s unraveling democracies. Overlooking Los Angeles, they debated, dreamed, and reimagined what art could be. Raymond Richard Neutra, son of the architect and director of the Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design, and Alex Ross, music critic at “The New Yorker” and cultural historian, guide viewers through the house’s storied walls. From rare archival materials to intimate present-day reflections, this documentary traces the intertwined lives of two modernist key figures and the home that once united them. After nearly a century, the house is now being transformed into a place for art, once again opening its doors to artists and thinkers, just like Scheyer envisioned in the 1930s.
The video premiered at the Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design in Silverlake, housed in the historic offices of Neutra, on June 7, 2025, with a subsequent panel discussion about Scheyer, Neutra, and the “Blue Four” featuring architectural historian Barbara Lamprecht, Escher, GuneWardena, and Raymond Neutra. The film was subsequently screened at the Münchner Architekturfilmtage – Häuser erzählen at the Filmmuseum München on March 24, 2026.
Produced by Benno Herz and Max Grimminger
Directed by Tyler Jack Anderson
Edit and music by Tyler Jack Anderson
Camera: Patrick Shaffer and Alexander Bergman
Sound: Patrick Shaffer
Archival Research & Concept: Benno Herz
Presented by the Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design and Blue Heights Arts & Culture.