Notes concerning Galka Scheyer:

The political climate and economic turmoil in Germany was of tremendous concern to Scheyer in 1932. With the modest sponsorship of the Oakland Art Gallery, she travelled to Europe to select new works from her “Blue Four” to exhibit in California. Arriving in Paris, she visited Marcel Duchamp and Constantin Brancusi, as well as Giorgio de Chirico and Piet Mondrian. In February of 1933 she travelled to Dessau where she visited Feininger and Klee. By March 1933, the National Socialists were elected to power and Hitler assumed dictatorial control of the government. The Bauhaus was closed in April 1933, and Klee was ousted from his position in Düsseldorf, accused of being a “Galician Jew.” The persecution of the avant garde artists prompted the Blue Four to move in 1933, with Klee immigrating to Switzerland. With a sense of urgency, Scheyer arranged for a shipment of more than 250 works by the Blue Four to Los Angeles, subsequently returning to California via New York and Chicago. Working with an extremely small budget, Scheyer would organise numerous exhibitions for the Blue Four in San Francisco, Oakland, Hollywood and New York enjoying a certain exclusivity. Scheyer left her estate to the Pasadena Art Museum which is now the Norton Simon Museum.