TALIESIN DRAWINGS
Recent Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright Selected from his Drawings
Frank Lloyd Wright, Edgar Kaufmann Jr.
Frank Lloyd Wright, Edgar Kaufmann Jr.: TALIESIN DRAWINGS [Recent Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright Selected from his Drawings]. New York: Wittenborn, Schultz, Inc., 1952. First edition [Problems of Contemporary Art 6]. Oblong small quarto. Printed wrappers with French fold to rear. 63 pp. 57 black and white illustrations. Elaborate graphic design throughout. Impossibly well-preserved: a fine copy. Rare in this condition.
11 x 9 softcover book with 63 pages devoted to 19 projects from Wright’s studios—mostly houses—but including a theatre for Hartford, CT, garage for Pttsburgh, second San Francisco Bay bridge. Artwork selected by Wright with commentary by Edgar Kaufmann Jr. Wright oversaw the selection, and of the nineteen structures detailed within, only eight had seen similar publication exposure previously. [Sweeney 864].
“This small book is the first one in over forty years to present the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright as it issues from his office, in the form of drawings. Today the drawings turned out at Taliesin and Taliesin West (his homes in Wisconsin and Arizona), are entirely predetermined by him and often are touched and retouched by his own hand.”
"In our country the chief obstacle to any real solution of the moderate-cost house-problem is the fact that our people do not really know how to live, imagining their idiosyncrasies to be their "tastes," their prejudices to be their predilections and their ignorance to be virtue where any beauty of living is concerned." -- Frank Lloyd Wright
Edgar Kaufmann Jr. (1910–1989) studied painting and typography in Europe before serving as an apprentice architect at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Foundation from 1933 to 1934. The Kaufmanns of Pittsburgh commissioned two of the iconic American residences of the 20th-century, Wright’s Fallingwater in 1936 and then Richard Neutra’s Palm Springs Desert House in 1946. Edgar Jr. joined the Museum of Modern Art in 1946 as director of the Industrial Design Department, a position he held until 1955. While at MoMA, he initiated the Good Design program (1950–1955) and was a strong proponent of uniform industrial design education standards.