This became a popular meeting place of actors, journalists, musicians and especially painters, who appreciated her policy of granting credit to artists and students.

In 1916 she closed her café and opened a gallery on the Hindenburgwall (today Heinrich Heine avenue), where she showed works by academic painters.

Ey initially decided to exhibit their art not for theoretical or economic reasons, but rather because of her personal friendships with the artists, although she quickly became an energetic proponent of modernism.

Her support for her artists extended even to darning their socks, and she defended Wollheim and Dix when they were hauled into court on charges that their paintings were immoral.

[1] During the 1920s, she was frequently painted by the artists in her circle, notably by Dix in 1924, and in 1925 by Arthur Kaufmann, who placed her at the center of his composition Contemporaries (Düsseldorf's Intellectual Scene).