Olgivanna Lloyd Wright

Olgivanna Lloyd Wright (December 27, 1898 – March 1, 1985) was the third and final wife of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whom she met in November 1924. The two married in 1928, founded Wright's architectural apprentice program, the Taliesin Fellowship, in 1932, and (with their son-in-law, William Wesley "Wes" Peters), the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation in 1940. Olgivanna became the President of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation upon her husband's death in 1959 and remained president until a month before her own death in 1985 (when Peters became president of the Foundation).

Olgivanna Lloyd Wright
Born
Olga Ivanovna Lazović

(1898-12-27)December 27, 1898
Cetinje, Montenegro
DiedMarch 1, 1985(1985-03-01) (aged 86)[1]
Scottsdale, Arizona, United States
OccupationDancer
Spouse(s)Vlademar Hinzenberg, Frank Lloyd Wright

Biography

She was born Olga Ivanovna (Olgivanna) Lazović in Montenegro on December 27, 1898 to Iovan Lazović and Milica Miljanov. Iovan Lazovic was Montenegro's first Chief Justice.[2] Milica, the daughter of the famous Montenegrin writer, duke and leader of the Kuči tribe, Marko Miljanov, had risen to the rank of general in the Montenegrin army. Olgivanna was the youngest of five children (with two brothers and two sisters) and by the time she knew her father, he was blind. As he was still a functioning Chief Justice, he would have Olgivanna, as a young girl, read important court documents to him.[3]

When Olgivanna was nine years old, her older sister Julia brought her to live with her and her husband Constantin Siberakov in Russia.[4] While in Russia, Olgivanna met and married her first husband, Vladimar Hinzenberg, with whom she had a daughter, Svetlana. According to Hinzenberg, he and Olgivanna were married in 1917,[5] which was also the year that their daughter, Svetlana (later Svetlana Wright Peters) was born.

After Svetlana's birth, Olgivanna met and became a devotee of G. I. Gurdjieff, eventually following him and his group to France, at the Prieuré des Basses Loges in what was known as Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. Olgivanna spent roughly seven years working under Gurdjieff. She had begun her career with Gurdjieff as a student of sacred dance, which she later mastered, and taught to students of her own including Diana Huebert.[6][7] While in France, she nursed Katherine Mansfield on her deathbed (on January 9, 1923).[8].

Gurdjieff was in a car accident in August 1924 and decided to disband the group. He apparently encouraged Olgivanna to go to the United States to perhaps save her marriage (she and Vladimar had not lived together for years, and their daughter was in New Jersey at her brother's home).[9] After a short while, Olgivanna felt that her marriage to Vladimar was over, so she went to Chicago, to perhaps persuade her friends to allow her teach their children the sacred dance (or "Movements", as they were known).[10] While in Chicago in late November, 1924, she went to a Saturday matinee of dancer Tamara Karsavina, which was also attended by Frank Lloyd Wright. The two sat in the box seat at the matinee and began talking. According to architectural writer Walt Lockley, "The Foundation and the Fellowship would not exist in any form if Wright had not gone to the [ballet] with a friend one Sunday afternoon in 1924 Chicago and sat near to the dark-haired Montenegrin dancer."[11] Wright wrote about this chance meeting in the 1943 edition of his autobiography:

In a sentence or two she criticized Karsavina from our point of view, showing unusual familiarity with dancing and dancers. No longer quite so strange, the emissary of Fate, mercy on my soul, from the other side of the known world, bowed her head to my invitation to tea at the nearby Congress. She accepted with perfect ease without artificial hesitation.

I was in love with her.

It was as simple as that.[12]

The two quickly initiated a romantic relationship. She and her daughter came to live at Wright's home, Taliesin in Wisconsin, and Olgivanna became pregnant with their daughter, Iovanna, by February 1925. In April of 1925, a major fire due to electrical problems destroyed Taliesin's living quarters.[13] The end of 1925 also brought problems for the two as Wright's estranged second wife began a vindictive campaign to deny Wright the ability to divorce her, which he was not able to do until 1927 (Olgivanna and her first husband had divorced years before). Wright and Olgivanna married August 1928 in Rancho Santa Fe, California, and honeymooned in Phoenix, Arizona.[14]

The Taliesin Fellowship

In 1932, the two initiated the Taliesin Fellowship, an architectural apprentice program. Former apprentice Edgar Tafel described Olgivanna's influence on the Taliesin Fellowship in his book, Apprentice to Genius: Years With Frank Lloyd Wright.[15] Tafel wrote that, "His [Wright's] marriage to Olgivanna was a tremendous stabilizing element for him—her devotion and strength brought his genius forward again. She knew how to take care of him." (Tafel, 129) Beyond Olgivanna's effect on Wright personally, Tafel (who was in the Fellowship from 1932-1941) wrote that her background with Gurdjieff had a positive effect on the organization of the Taliesin Fellowship, which regularly had dozens of men and women living with the Wrights at Taliesin in Wisconsin and his winter home, Taliesin West, in Arizona:

This experience [with the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man] gave her the background to organize the operation of Taliesin and to bring another dimension to the life of the Fellowship. In this way, her experience with Gurdjieff did influence the form of the Fellowship and some of the activities envisioned from the beginning. Mrs. Wright was the force that kept the Fellowship in working order, from the very start. A remarkable woman.[16]

Olgivanna continued to run the Taliesin Fellowship after Wright's death on April 9, 1959, almost until her own death in Scottsdale, Arizona, on March 1, 1985.[1] The last quarter-century of Wright's life (1935–59)—when he, Olgivanna and the Taliesin Fellowship spent their winters in Arizona building Taliesin West—were arguably his most productive, representing "more than half of [Wright's] building".[17]

Embroiled in scandal and controversy from the beginning of their relationship (since both were married at its start), Olgivanna's legacy extended past her natural life. She had planned the removal of Wright's body from its Wisconsin grave, which was then "cremated, mixed with her ashes and used in the walls of a memorial garden to be built on the grounds of their home at Taliesin West."[18] The Wisconsin legislature prohibited this move, but nonetheless her plan was carried out successfully:

When Robert Llewellyn Wright—the son who 26 years earlier had driven through the night to return Frank Lloyd Wright's body to Wisconsin after Wright died at St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix—objected to the "desecration," Iovanna sent him a terse telegram: "The heritage of Taliesin is not for the likes of you."[17]

Iovanna Lloyd Wright (1925–2015) was Olgivanna's only child with Wright. Olgivanna's only other daughter, Svetlana Hinzenberg, adopted the surname Wright. She married one of Wright's apprentices, Fellowship member William Wesley "Wes" Peters, when she turned 18 in 1935. Wes helped Wright ward off creditors and bankruptcy. Svetlana Peters died in a car crash in 1946 with her and Wes Peters' youngest son, Daniel, leaving Wes Peters widowed to raise their remaining child, Brandoch (b. 1941).[19] In 1970, Olgivanna invited Svetlana Alliluyeva (the youngest child and only daughter of Joseph Stalin) to Taliesin West, the winter compound of the Taliesin Fellowship. Alliluyeva and Wes Peters married three weeks after they met. After producing with Wes Peters a daughter, Olga, in a marriage that lasted 20 months, Alliluyeva came away with a less than glowing impression of the matriarch and her management of Taliesin:

This hierarchical system was appalling: the widow at the top, then the board of directors (a formality); then her own close inner circle, making all the real decisions; then working architects—the real working horses; at the bottom, students who paid high sums to be admitted, only to be sent the next day to work in the kitchen to peel potatoes ... Mrs. Wright's word was law. She had to be adored and worshipped and flattered as often as possible; flowers sent by mail and presented by hand she enjoyed and encouraged. She gave advice to the architects, guided a drama circle, a dance group and a choir, counselling on private lives and relationships, expecting everyone to make personal confessions to her. She was a "spiritual leader" and self-appointed minister, preaching on Sunday mornings on matters of God and man, when everyone was supposed to be in her large living room.[20]

Bibliography

Books by Olgivanna Lloyd Wright

Olgivanna Lloyd Wright wrote a weekly newspaper column starting in the 1950s entitled, "Our House". The newspaper columns were published the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, Arizona and The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. "Our House" was published as a book of the same name. In addition, she wrote four other books, published by Horizon Books in the 1960s with the last one, The Struggle Within published in 1971:

  1. The Shining Brow: Frank Lloyd Wright (1960)
  2. The Roots of Life (1963)
  3. Frank Lloyd Wright: His Life, His Work, His Words (1966)
  4. The Struggle Within (1971)

Books about Olgivanna and the Taliesin Fellowship
  • The Faraway Music by Svetlana Allilueva (also known as Distant Music.)[21] Edition: 1st. New Delhi: Lancer International, 1984.
  • The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship by Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman, 2006, includes especially extensive and strong documentation on Olgivanna, her relationship with Wright, including "the strong influence the occultist Georgi Gurdjieff had on Wright and especially his wife Olgivanna"[22]
  • Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography by Meryle Secrest, 1992. HarperCollins, New York City.
  • From Crna Cora to Taliesin Black Mountain to Shining Brow: The Life of Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, by Maxine Fawcett-Yeske and Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer. ODO Editions, 2017. ISBN 978-1939621597
  • Reflections from the Shining Brow: My Years with Frank Lloyd Wright and Olgivanna Lazovich, by Kamal Amin. Fithian Press. 2004.
  • A Taliesin Legacy: The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright's Apprentices (Architecture Series) by Tobias S. Guggenheimer. Wiley, 1995. "[A]n encyclopedia study of the projects planned and/or built by these students, who eagerly embraced Wright's ethic of organic design." (Book Review)
  • Taliesin Reflections: My Years Before, During and After Living with Frank Lloyd Wright by Earl Nisbet, 2006. (Book Review)

Videography
  • Frank Lloyd Wright – A film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. (1998). PBS Home Video, August 28, 2001 (153 minutes). ASIN: B00005MEPO.
  • Partner to Genius: A Biography of Olgivanna Lloyd Wright. PBS Home Video, VHS, May 13, 1997. ASIN: B00000JKXH.
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References
  1. Saxon, Wolfgang (March 2, 1985). "Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, Wife of the Architect, is Dead at 85". The New York Times. Retrieved December 6, 2017.
  2. Meryl Secrest. Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography. HarperCollins, New York City, 1993, 303.
  3. Fawcett-Yeske, Ph.D., Maxine; Pfeiffer, D.H.L., Bruce (2017). From Crna Cora to Taliesin Black Mountain to Shining Brow: The Life of Olgivanna Lloyd Wright. China: ORO Editions. p. 10. ISBN 978-1939621597.
  4. Fawcett-Yeske, Ph.D., Maxine; Pfeiffer, D.H.L., Bruce (2017). From Crna Cora to Taliesin Black Mountain to Shining Brow: The Life of Olgivanna Lloyd Wright. China: ORO Editions. p. 2. ISBN 978-1939621597.
  5. The Capital Times, September 24, 1926
  6. Katherine Mansfield “Olgivanna”
  7. Humphries, J. I. "Introduction". Diana Faidy - Reminiscences of My Work with Gurdjieff. Retrieved February 12, 2019.
  8. Friedland and Zellman, The Fellowship, pp. 76–78
  9. Fawcett-Yeske, Ph.D., Maxine; Pfeiffer, D.H.L., Bruce (2017). From Crna Cora to Taliesin Black Mountain to Shining Brow: The Life of Olgivanna Lloyd Wright. China: ORO Editions. p. 66-68. ISBN 978-1939621597..
  10. Fawcett-Yeske, Ph.D., Maxine; Pfeiffer, D.H.L., Bruce (2017). From Crna Cora to Taliesin Black Mountain to Shining Brow: The Life of Olgivanna Lloyd Wright. China: ORO Editions. p. 66-68. ISBN 978-1939621597.
  11. Walt Lockley. Cult Secrets of Taliesin West, online article Archived October 22, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  12. Frank Lloyd Wright. Frank Lloyd Wright Collected Writings: 1939-49, volume 4. Edited by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, introduction by Kenneth Frampton (Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., New York City, 1994), p. 205.
  13. Meryl Secrest. Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography. HarperCollins, New York City, 1993, 315-17.
  14. Taliesin Preservation, Inc. – Visitors Guide – Be An Insider!
  15. Edgar Tafel. Years with Frank Lloyd Wright: Apprentice to Genius. 1979. McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York.
  16. Edgar Tafel. Years with Frank Lloyd Wright: Apprentice to Genius. 1979. McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, p. 138-39.
  17. Phoenix – News – Room With No View: Frank Lloyd Wright's Houses Are Nice Places To Visit But You Wouldn't Want To Live There
  18. Frank Lloyd Wright
  19. Fowler, Glenn (July 18, 1991). "William Wesley Peters Dies at 79; A Devotee of Frank Lloyd Wright". The New York Times. Retrieved December 6, 2017.
  20. The Faraway Music by Svetlana Allilueva, 1986. p. 86.
  21. Waltlockley.com Archived October 22, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  22. Book Review of The Fellowship (Amazon Book Review)
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