Olgivanna Lloyd Wright


Olgivanna Lloyd Wright 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, 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.

Biography

She was born Olga Ivanovna Lazović in Montenegro on December 27, 1898 to Iovan Lazović and Milica Miljanov. Iovan Lazovic was Montenegro's first Chief Justice. 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 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.
When Olgivanna was nine years old, her older sister Julia brought her to live with her and her husband Constantin Siberakov in Russia. 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, which was also the year that their daughter, Svetlana 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. While in France, she nursed Katherine Mansfield on her deathbed..
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. 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. 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 with a friend one Sunday afternoon in 1924 Chicago and sat near to the dark-haired Montenegrin dancer." 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.

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. 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. Wright and Olgivanna married August 1928 in Rancho Santa Fe, California, and honeymooned in Phoenix, Arizona.

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. Tafel wrote that, "His 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." Beyond Olgivanna's effect on Wright personally, Tafel 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 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.

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. The last quarter-century of Wright's life —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 building".
Embroiled in scandal and controversy from the beginning of their relationship, 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." 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."

Iovanna Lloyd Wright 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. In 1970, Olgivanna invited Svetlana Alliluyeva 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 ; 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.

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
  2. The Roots of Life
  3. Frank Lloyd Wright: His Life, His Work, His Words
  4. The Struggle Within

    Books about Olgivanna and the Taliesin Fellowship