Despite its progressive and experimental programme, the Norlyst gallery is today not well known in the gallery scene of the 1930s and 1940s. It was located close to the gallery district around 57th Street, where other galleries as the Julien Levy Gallery or Wheye Gallery were located. Elenore Lust opened her gallery in March 1943, together with the émigré artist Jimmy Ernst. On his arrival in New York in 1938, Jimmy Ernst (1920–1984), the son of the artist Max Ernst, got in contact with the circle of émigré surrealist painters, while experimenting with different surrealistic techniques. After working at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery (founded in October 1942 and located at 30 West 57th Street), he joined Elenore Lust to co-found the Norlyst Gallery. It was there that, from March, 29 until April, 14 1943, he put on his first one-man show Reflections of the Inner Eye. Elenore Lust (1909–1997) studied at the New York University and Art Students League and evolved during the 1930s as a muralist and portraitist while engaging with the National Association of Women Artists (NAWA). Representing a cross section of contemporary painting, photography and other media, Elenore Lust tried to focus on surrealist and abstract expressionist styles and promoting women artists and photographers. She was also very well connected to the New School for Social Research, where émigré artists, photographers and intellectuals could re-start their careers in exile in New York while teaching at the school.

From Juni, 1 until June, 24 1944, the Captured Light. Experimental Photography exhibition featured, in addition to surrealist paintings, the work of several photographers. Among them were the émigrés Josef Breitenbach, Erwin Blumenfeld, Rolf Tietgens, György Kepes and Lázló Moholy-Nagy. The group show was one of the first to present experimental photography in a gallery setting in New York. This was a follow-up to the first, highly successful, Captured Light exhibition held in January of the same year with contributions from émigré photographers Andreas Feininger, Erwin Blumenfeld and Rolf Tietgens. A third edition of Captured Light opened on April, 30 in 1945. Two articles on the exhibitions and the subject of surrealist photography appeared in Popular Photography magazine. (Downes 1944; Kraus 1945)
As well as showing photography in her gallery, Elenore Lust also supported the work of female émigré artists and lent them space to put on exhibitions. Among those who benefited were Jaqueline Lamba (1944), Louise Bourgeois (1947), probably the photographer Ruth Bernhard and in 1948 Lotte Jacobi. Lotte Jacobi’s exhibition ran from October, 3 until October, 10 and was reviewed in the Aufbau newspaper (Wolfradt 1948, 19).
In March 1945 the émigré photographer Marion Palfi had her first one-woman exhibition Great American artists of minority groups and democracy work at the Norlyst Gallery. Her study was financed by the Council Against Intolerance in America.