The Blue Four Collection at the Norton Simon Museum

A famous art collector, dealer, and indomitable champion of modern art, Emmy (Galka) Scheyer (1889-1945) is best known as the founder of the Blue Four artists' group, whose members were Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, Alexei Jawlensky and Vasily Kandinsky. Through her contacts with the art world in Europe and America, Scheyer acquired a remarkable collection of paintings, works on paper, and sculpture, now owned by the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California. This volume presents almost 500 items from the collection, reproducing most in full colour. It features numerous works by the Blue Four, as well as those by such European artists as Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger, Emil Nolde, Kurt Schwitters and El Lissitzky. A final section is devoted to artists Scheyer knew in California such as Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham and Diego Rivera. Each entry contains full documentation and an essay situating the work within a historical context. There is also a lengthy introduction to the book that provides biographical detail about Scheyer and extensive excerpts from her correspondence.