Draft:Galka Emmy Scheyer Centre

The registered society Galka Emmy Scheyer Centre promotes research on the paintress, sculptress and art promoter Galka Scheyer and her family,(née Emilie Esther Scheyer, * April 15, 1889 in Brunswick, Germany; † December 13, 1945 in Hollywood, California). The German-based society is aiming at making Galka Scheyer´s life and works known to the general public. It focuses on scientific research in international archives, literary sources and establishing networks with collectors of art. Furthermore, the Centre initiates and promotes exhibitions of artwork connecting and reflecting Galka Scheyer´s pioneering activities. This consequently includes acquiring, collecting and restoring paintings, sculptures and photographs of Scheyer and her professional circles. Lastly, the Centre commissions lectures and theatre productions focusing on Scheyer and issued a website in German and English language.

History

Galka Emmy Scheyer established and named the group Blue Four incorporating the painters Lyonel Feininger, Alexej von Jawlensky, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Scheyer promoted their works of art in the United States between 1924 and 1945. The Scheyer Centre focuses on this significant and historically extraordinary cooperation. Apart from the Blue Four, Scheyer also cooperated and corresponded with artists Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Walter Dexel as much as collectors Katherine Sophie Dreier, Käte and Otto Ralfs and Heinrich Kirchhoff. Secondly, the Centre promotes research on Scheyer´s biography and the creative activities as paintress and sculptress in her own right. Galka Emmy Scheyer dedicated a good part of her life to the creative empowerment of children and adolescents, as was proclaimed by the movement of progressive education, “Reformpädagogik” (i.e. reformist pedagogy). Another good part of her life she dedicated to friends such as Greta Garbo, Merlene Dietrich and Lette Valeska. Again, the Scheyer Centre is doing and promoting research into these two aspects of her biography.

The centre was registered November 6, 2020. It is neutral and unbiased as concerns politics, ethnics and religious denominations. All activities are non-profit, the registered society entirely depends on membership fees, donations and endowments.

Activities

The publication of the first comprehensive biography Galka Scheyer. Ein Leben für Kunst und Kreativität, written by Gilbert Holzgang, was made possible by the Galka Emmy Scheyer Centre in close cooperation with a number of donators (among others notably the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, Alexej von Jawlensky Archive, Muralto).

Secondly, by means of contacts to international lenders, the society helped to plan and lay out the exhibition Galka Scheyer and the Blue Four: Kandinsky, Feininger, Paul Klee, Jawlensky in the Städtische Museum Braunschweig (2024).

In the same year the documentary Galka Scheyer, ganz allein (GS, all alone) was put on stage by the Theater Zeitraum.

Publications

• Gilbert Holzgang: »Galka Scheyer. Ein Leben für Kunst und Kreativität« Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2023, ISBN 978-3-7319-1366-5

• Katrin Keßler und Gilbert Holzgang (Hrsg.): »Galka Scheyer in Braunschweig. Auf Spuren der jüdischen Kunstvermittlerin«, Bet Tfila - Forschungsstelle für jüdische Architektur in Europa | TU Braunschweig, Braunschweig 2021, ISBN 978-3-9802-5415-1

• »Galka Scheyer-Atlas«. Ein digitaler Atlas mit ca. 50 Orten, die für Galka Emmy Scheyer weltweit von großer Wichtigkeit waren. Produziert von Bet-Tfila – Forschungsstelle für jüdische Architektur in Europa und dem Verein Galka Emmy Scheyer Zentrum, unterstützt vom Israel Jacobson Netzwerk e.V.

Weblinks

• Galka Emmy Scheyer Zentrum Website

• »Galka Scheyer-Atlas«. Ein digitaler Atlas mit ca. 50 Orten. (https://ij-n.de/aktivitaeten/galka-scheyer-atlas/).