[photo credit: Norton Simon Museum]
“Dear Little Friend: Impressions of Galka Scheyer,” on view through July 20, draws from an archive that has belonged to Pasadena since 1953, when Scheyer’s collection of roughly 450 works and 800 documents a figure cited by the exhibition’s curator, Gloria Williams Sander was transferred to what was then the Pasadena Art Institute. The exhibition tells a story the collection’s inventory numbers cannot: how one woman’s personal relationships shaped the way European modernism took root in the United States.
Scheyer (1889–1945) was born Emilie Esther Scheyer in Braunschweig, Germany, to a middle-class Jewish family. She trained as a painter, but after meeting Russian artist Alexei Jawlensky in 1916, she remade herself into an art advocate. Jawlensky gave her the nickname “Galka,” the Russian word for jackdaw, a gregarious, clever bird.
Through Jawlensky, Scheyer befriended Bauhaus faculty members Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee and Vassily Kandinsky. In 1924, she united the four artists under the name “the Blue Four” and set out to promote their work in the United States.
“They all had different artistic styles, but they wanted to give her a sort of rubric to help her organize exhibitions,” said Sander, who also curated the museum’s 2017 exhibition “Maven of Modernism: Galka Scheyer in California.” “‘Blue’ has a long-standing importance for modernism in Europe and the United States; it’s considered to be a spiritual color.”
Scheyer arrived in California in 1925 and held her first Blue Four exhibition at Stanford University that October. Her charisma drew attention as much as the art itself. “The reaction not only to the works that she was showing, but also to her charismatic delivery and lecturing was immense,” Sander said.
Among the first American artists Scheyer met was Maynard Dixon, known for his depictions of the American West. Dixon endorsed her work and inscribed a portrait of her “To Madame Moderne Kunst” To Ms. Modern Art. That 1925 portrait is in the exhibition.
The show also features a vivid colored pencil portrait by ceramicist Beatrice Wood and Peter Krasnow’s 1927 painting “Recalling Happy Memories,” which depicts Scheyer lecturing to a rapt audience with a pointer in hand. Each work in the exhibition arrived not through a gallery transaction but through an act of friendship.
“Galka was one of the most amazing art impresarios in the United States in the early 20th century,” Sander said. “She was a single woman in a profession as an art dealer inhabited by men, which was an unusual task she set for herself.”
When Scheyer moved to Los Angeles full-time in 1933, she expanded her circle to include collectors Louise and Walter Arensberg and architect Richard Neutra, who designed her home-and-gallery space in the Hollywood Hills. Every room displayed Blue Four art, and Scheyer hosted salons where visitors discussed the work on her walls.
The exhibition also presents material related to Scheyer’s home on Blue Heights Drive, a street she named herself. “I wanted to bring people’s attention to her house because it’s inseparable from her work and her spirit in many ways,” Sander said.
Scheyer mounted more than 60 exhibitions from 1925 to 1944, according to Sander. She died in Los Angeles in 1945 at age 56. Her collection was eventually entrusted to the Pasadena Art Institute, which evolved into the Pasadena Art Museum and, after industrialist Norton Simon took over the institution in 1974, became the Norton Simon Museum. The museum now houses more than 12,000 objects, according to a museum press release, and the Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection remains among its signature holdings.
Photographer Edward Weston once called Scheyer “the ideal ‘go-between’ for the artist and his public.” The portraits, letters and ephemera in “Dear Little Friend” suggest she was something more than that, a confidante whose relationships outlasted any single exhibition.
“Dear Little Friend: Impressions of Galka Scheyer” is on view at the Norton Simon Museum, 411 W. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, through July 20. The museum is open Thursday through Monday, noon to 5 p.m. (Friday and Saturday to 7 p.m.); closed Tuesday and Wednesday. Admission is $20 for adults, $15 for seniors, and free for students with I.D. and visitors age 18 and under. Admission is free for all on the first Friday of each month from 4 to 7 p.m. Parking is free. The museum is wheelchair accessible. Pasadena Transit and MTA bus line No. 180/181 stop in front of the museum; the Memorial Park Station on the Metro A Line is the closest rail stop. Information: (626) 449-6840 or nortonsimon.org.
The Scheyer collection has been in Pasadena for more than 70 years now longer than Scheyer herself spent promoting it. The portraits, though, still look like what they always were: gifts from artists to a friend who believed in them before anyone else did.
Norton Simon Museum — “Dear Little Friend: Impressions of Galka Scheyer” Exhibition Dates: February 20–July 20, 2026 Hours: Mon, Thu, Sun: 12–5 PM; Fri–Sat: 12–7 PM; Closed Tue–Wed Venue: Norton Simon Museum, 411 W. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91105 Cost: $20 adults; $15 seniors; Free for students with ID and ages 18 and under Link: https://www.nortonsimon.org/
