Frank Lloyd Wright: The Lost Years, 1910-1922 uncovers the real story of Wright's travels in Europe. By examining this elusive and influential period in Wright's development, Alofsin restores an important chapter to the history of modern architecture. Bringing new definition and insight to the story of Frank Lloyd Wright, this book has become a standard work on America's greatest architect. "Alofsin has set out to explain the impact of European culture on Wright by integrating its artistic influence with the tumultuous events in his private life. . . . [He] succeeds in this ambitious goal."—Kevin Nute, Architects' Journal "A convincing and well-documented case that these were in fact crucial and fruitful years in Wright's development as an architect. . . . Absorbing."—Catherine Maclay, San Jose Mercury News "One of the best."—Robert Fulford, Toronto Globe and Mail

Frank Lloyd Wright--the Lost Years, 1910-1922: A Study of Influence

Arts & Photography

Alofsin, Anthony

Architecture

University of Chicago Press

Frank Lloyd Wright: The Lost Years, 1910-1922 uncovers the real story of Wright's travels in Europe. By examining this elusive and influential period in Wright's development, Alofsin restores an important chapter to the history of modern architecture. Bringing new definition and insight to the story of Frank Lloyd Wright, this book has become a standard work on America's greatest architect. "Alofsin has set out to explain the impact of European culture on Wright by integrating its artistic influence with the tumultuous events in his private life. . . . [He] succeeds in this ambitious goal."—Kevin Nute, Architects' Journal "A convincing and well-documented case that these were in fact crucial and fruitful years in Wright's development as an architect. . . . Absorbing."—Catherine Maclay, San Jose Mercury News "One of the best."—Robert Fulford, Toronto Globe and Mail

Biographies & Memoirs

In When Buildings Speak,Anthony Alofsin explores the rich yet often overlooked architecture of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire and its successor states. He shows that several different styles emerged in this milieu during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moreover, he contends that each of these styles communicates to us in a manner resembling language and its particular means of expression. Covering a wide range of buildings—from national theaters to crematoria, apartment buildings to warehouses, and sanatoria to postal savings banks—Alofsin proposes a new way of interpreting this language. He calls on viewers to read buildings in two ways: through their formal elements and through their political, social, and cultural contexts. By looking through Alofsin’s eyes, readers can see how myriad nations sought to express their autonomy by tapping into the limitless possibilities of art and architectural styles. And such architecture can still speak very powerfully to us today about the contradictory issues affecting parts of the former Habsburg Empire. “The book itself as a production is spectacular.”—David Dunster, Architectural Review

When Buildings Speak: Architecture as Language in the Habsburg Empire and Its Aftermath, 1867-1933

History

Europe

When Buildings Speak: Architecture As Language in the Habsburg Empire and Its Aftermath, 1867-1933

These Secessionist art prints, acquired by Frank Lloyd Wright and his lover Mamah Borthwick Cheney during their infamous flight to Europe in 1909–1910, reveal a new dimension of the architect’s taste and aesthetic preferences. This previously unknown and newly discovered group of prints from his personal art collection shows that around the turn of the twentieth century Wright had a surprising interest in European artists pursuing their own versions of modernism. Identified from careful archival research, the prints demonstrate how richly diffuse and multifaceted modernism was before the codification of a modernist canon. Wright, a revolutionary architect, preferred the work of Secessionists to that of the avant-garde of expressionism, cubism, and futurism. To Wright, the artists he selected were modern, and they appealed deeply to his interest in landscapes and graphic techniques of reproduction. In Frank Lloyd Wright, Art Collector, Anthony Alofsin presents the first catalogue raisonné of the thirty-two prints and one original drawing that constitute Wright’s Secessionist collection. Alofsin explores Wright’s encounters with German and Austrian art before his travels to Europe; the fluid definition of modern art around 1909; and the complex context for Wright’s acquiring this collection while in Europe. This book, with its original research, puts into a new light a range of artists—some famous, others unknown—who sought to express, like Wright, their own rebellion against academic traditions. A unique contribution to the history of modern art, Frank Lloyd Wright, Art Collector offers stunningly original insights into the master’s artistic taste, as well as to a group of progressive artists whose work has been undeservedly overlooked in conventional histories of modernism.

Frank Lloyd Wright, Art Collector: Secessionist Prints from the Turn of the Century (Roger Fullington Series in Architecture)

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

University of Texas Press

This fascinating book is the first critical examination of the East Building, I. M. Pei’s celebrated addition to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Distinguished contributors consider this iconic building from various historical vantage points, from the evolution of its design to its place in 20th-century museum architecture. 
Essays by Neil Harris, Anthony Alofsin, Alona Nitzan-Shiftan, and Réjean Legault discuss the building’s relationship to the city of Washington, its critical and public reception, and the special nature of its use of materials. Barry Bergdoll and David Brownlee compare it to contemporary works by Marcel Breuer, Edward Larrabee Barnes, and other modernists. Victoria Newhouse, Marc Treib, Barnabas Calder, and Andrew Saint consider it in the context of museum architecture, exploring the relationship between art installations and museum design, museum additions by other well-known architects, and the challenges of building and supporting an art museum outside a major metropolitan area. Drawings, models, and photographs provide a visual history of the building’s development.

A Modernist Museum in Perspective: The East Building, National Gallery of Art (Studies in the History of Art Series)

Americas

NGW-Stud Hist Art

A dazzling dual portrait of Frank Lloyd Wright and early twentieth-century New York, revealing the city’s role in establishing the career of America’s most famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) took his first major trip to New York in 1909, fleeing a failed marriage and artistic stagnation. He returned a decade later, his personal life and architectural career again in crisis. Booming 1920s New York served as a refuge, but it also challenged him and resurrected his career. The city connected Wright with important clients and commissions that would harness his creative energy and define his role in modern architecture, even as the stock market crash took its toll on his benefactors. Wright denounced New York as an “unlivable prison” even as he reveled in its culture. The city became an urban foil for Wright’s work in the desert and in the “organic architecture” he promoted as an alternative to American Art Deco and the International Style. New York became a major protagonist at the end of Wright’s life, as he spent his final years at the Plaza Hotel working on the Guggenheim Museum, the building that would cement his legacy. Anthony Alofsin has broken new ground by mining the recently opened Wright archives held by Columbia University and the Museum of Modern Art. His foundational research provides a crucial and innovative understanding of Wright’s life, his career, and the conditions that enabled his success. The result is at once a stunning biography and a glittering portrait of early twentieth-century Manhattan.

Wright and New York: The Making of America's Architect

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

A dazzling dual portrait of Frank Lloyd Wright and early twentieth-century New York, revealing the city’s role in establishing the career of America’s most famous architect\n“Traces the transitive relationship of the architect and the city, as well as the genesis of the bohemian culture of the East Village."—Patti Smith, New York Times\nFrank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) took his first major trip to New York in 1909, fleeing a failed marriage and artistic stagnation. He returned a decade later, his personal life and architectural career again in crisis. Booming 1920s New York served as a refuge, but it also challenged him and resurrected his career. The city connected Wright with important clients and commissions that would harness his creative energy and define his role in modern architecture, even as the stock market crash took its toll on his benefactors.\nWright denounced New York as an “unlivable prison” even as he reveled in its culture. The city became an urban foil for Wright’s work in the desert and in the “organic architecture” he promoted as an alternative to American Art Deco and the International Style. New York became a major protagonist at the end of Wright’s life, as he spent his final years at the Plaza Hotel working on the Guggenheim Museum, the building that would cement his legacy.\nAnthony Alofsin has broken new ground by mining the recently opened Wright archives held by Columbia University and the Museum of Modern Art. His foundational research provides a crucial and innovative understanding of Wright’s life, his career, and the conditions that enabled his success. The result is at once a stunning biography and a glittering portrait of early twentieth-century Manhattan.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Wasmuth folios, one of the most important publications on modern architecture in the 20th century, is available once again from Rizzoli. First published in Germany in 1910, these 100 plates of Wright's early work had enormous influence on the architects of the time and will provide a valuable resource to historians and architects today. This facsimile edition includes the original selection of presentation and working drawings form the Oak Park period, the years perhaps most crucial to Wright's development. Also faithfully reproduced are the architect's own introduction and his comments on each project. A new foreword discusses the recently discovered historic background of these folios and Wright's intention to proffer them as a primer for a new democratic American architecture.

Studies and Executed Buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright: Lloyd Wright, Frank

Rizzoli

Halflife is a fictive memoir, hovering between fiction and biography. Deciding that half his life is over, a young man recalls stories of people, animals, plants, and places that he he has known. Just as matter decays according to its own physical half life, these accounts are bound together by themes of loss, but they also reverberate with creation and delight. The metaphor of halflife, the measure of physical decay, weaves in and out of the stories. The soothing of loss is found in the observation of life around us. The journey unwinds in five chapters that describe mountains, desert, Villa Trice (a mysterious estate in Texas), Aquidneck Island, and Memphis, Tenessee. The writing is crisp and elegant. The author is an artist, architect, and historian. Halflife is his first work of fiction and memoir.

Halflife

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

InnerformsLtd.com

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Alofsin, Anthony. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Alofsin, Anthony

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Alofsin, Anthony. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Frank Lloyd Wright--the Lost Years, 1910-1922: A Study of Influence

Frank Lloyd Wright--the Lost Years, 1910-1922: A Study of Influence

When Buildings Speak: Architecture as Language in the Habsburg Empire and Its Aftermath, 1867-1933

When Buildings Speak: Architecture As Language in the Habsburg Empire and Its Aftermath, 1867-1933

Frank Lloyd Wright, Art Collector: Secessionist Prints from the Turn of the Century (Roger Fullington Series in Architecture)

A Modernist Museum in Perspective: The East Building, National Gallery of Art (Studies in the History of Art Series)

Wright and New York: The Making of America's Architect

Wright and New York: The Making of America's Architect

Studies and Executed Buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright: Lloyd Wright, Frank

Halflife