Lecture: Dear Little Tornado: Galka Scheyer in Hollywood

Victoria Dailey, Writer and Independent Curator
May 13, 2017

Although Los Angeles had a small group of modern artists in the 1920s, modernism was little known and often disparaged by most of the city’s art world. When Galka Scheyer organized the first Blue Four exhibition in Los Angeles in 1926, one artist remarked: "It reminded me of crawling things—of worms or things mouldering in the ground, Ugh! It was awful." Such an uninviting climate did not deter Scheyer, affectionately called "Little Tornado" by Lyonel Feininger, one of the Blue Four. The Little Tornado persisted in her efforts, with varying degrees of success. Her interactions with the pioneering modernists of Los Angeles are discussed in this lecture.

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition, Maven of Modernism: Galka Scheyer in California.