Researching Frank Wright

Wright was the pioneer of what came to be called the Prairie School movement of architecture and also developed the concept of the Usonian home in Broadacre City, his vision for urban planning in the United States. He also designed original and innovative offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, museums, and other commercial projects. Wright-designed interior elements (including leaded glass windows, floors, furniture and even tableware) were integrated into these structures. He wrote several books and numerous articles and was a popular lecturer in the United States and in Europe. Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time". In 2019, a selection of his work became a listed World Heritage Site as The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Raised in rural Wisconsin, Wright studied civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin and then apprenticed in Chicago, briefly with Joseph Lyman Silsbee, and then with Louis Sullivan at Adler & Sullivan. Wright opened his own successful Chicago practice in 1893 and established a studio in his Oak Park, Illinois home in 1898. His fame increased and his personal life sometimes made headlines: his leaving of first wife Catherine Tobin for Mamah Cheney (1909); the murder of Mamah and her children and others at his Taliesin estate by a staff member (1914); his tempestuous marriage with second wife Miriam Noel (1923–1927); and his courtship and marriage with Olgivanna Lazović (1927–1959).

As a painter Wright's work has been exhibited widely. His work was the subject of a solo exhibition, "Frank Wright: Paintings, Prints, Drawings" at Adams, Davidson Galleries, Washington, DC, which ran from May 6 until June 7, 1975 and of several solo exhibitions at the Kennedy Gallery also in WDC. He had a solo museum exhibition entitled "Frank Wright: Paintings 1968-1980" at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, in Washington, DC, which was on display from June 13 until July 19, 1981. He has been a professor of art for many years at the George Washington University, where his students have included the noted painter, sculptor and draughtsman Robert Liberace who credits Wright with having instilled into him a love of the old masters. He died August 9, 2020.