Experience Neutra

The Galka Scheyer House – A Conversation with Raymond Neutra & Alex Ross

Perched high in the Hollywood Hills, the Galka Scheyer House is more than a striking example of modernist architecture — it is a hidden portal into an important chapter of L.A.’s cultural history. This first-ever documentary on Galka Scheyer (1889–1945) tells the story of her life as an art impresario, curator, artist, and modernist trailblazer, a visionary who introduced the U.S. to the artist group “The Blue Four,” consisting of Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, and Paul Klee, and their concepts of abstract modernist art.

Scheyer left behind her own painting career to become a tireless advocate for European modernism, forging new artistic terrain in California. When Richard Neutra — already a star of modernist architecture — built her a spectacular Hollywood Hills home and gallery in 1934, it became a vibrant gathering place for some of the era’s most radical minds such as John Cage, Maya Deren, and László Moholy-Nagy, as well as many other artists who fled Europe’s unraveling democracies. Overlooking Los Angeles, they debated, dreamed, and reimagined what art could be.

Raymond Richard Neutra, son of the architect and director of the Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design, and Alex Ross, music critic at “The New Yorker” and cultural historian, guide viewers through the house’s storied walls. From rare archival materials to intimate present-day reflections, this documentary traces the intertwined lives of two modernist key figures and the home that once united them. After nearly a century, the house is now being transformed into a place for art, once again opening its doors to artists and thinkers, just like Scheyer envisioned in the 1930s.

Presented by the Neutra Institute for Survival Through Design and Blue Heights Arts & Culture.

Produced by Benno Herz and Max Grimminger
Directed by Tyler Jack Anderson
Edit and music by Tyler Jack Anderson
Camera: Patrick Shaffer and Alexander Bergman
Sound: Patrick Shaffer
Archival Research & Concept: Benno Herz

A tour of the 1955 Sidney and Sonja Brown House

Be sure to compare the scenes from this Architectural Digest video with some Shulman photographs of the Sidney and Sonja Brown House in our project gallery.

1958 Neutra and Alexander UCLA Lab School

From the film ‘Neutra-Survival Through Design’ Directed by PJ Letofsky

Neutra Plywood Demonstration House

Poster Neutra Apartments

Expansive, Still and Connected: Life at the Strathmore Apartments

A review of how Neutra made small rooms feel and appear larger.

Dion Neutra Reunion House – Virtual Tour