Frank Lloyd Wright--the Lost Years, 1910-1922

Had Frank Lloyd Wright's career ended in 1909, he still would be considered the preeminent early American modernist. But, despite the fact that a critical rupture occurred in his personal life in that year, Wright's career did not end. By 1909, with his Prairie period over, Wright left his wife and six children and travelled to Europe, initially with Mamah Cheney, the wife of one of his clients. While the scandal of Mrs. Cheney's murder in 1914 attracted the public eye, the impact of Wright's travels abroad and the dramatic directions his work subsequently took have been ignored. "Frank Lloyd Wright - The Lost Years, 1910-1922" lays out the facts about Wright's lost decade. With the first complete access to Wright's archives by any scholar in over forty years, Anthony Alofsin reconstructs the a history of Wright's travels in Europe. In recovering this elusive period in Wright's development, he restores a chapter to the history of modern architecture. Along with the discovery of a second trip to Berlin in 1911, Alofsin reveals that Wright learned far more from Europe than has been thought. He traces the history of Wright's two Wasmuth publications in Berlin in 1910-1911 as well as their critical reception. The story of their influence on modern architecture in Europe is widely accepted and often repeated. It is perhaps, as Alofsin demonstrates, wrong. Alofsin's investigations also introduce a new definition to the little known work Wright produced during this period, which he describes as Wright's primitivist phase. He traces this influence in his art through Wright's explorations of primitivist sources, innovations in sculpture, and intensification of the use of ornament. Less tangible, but as important, was Wright's view of himself, his art, and society, and Alofsin uncovers the European impact on the architect's image of himself as a crusader and an educator, bound to improve society through his art.