Frank Lloyd Wright Credited Japan for His All-American Aesthetic

News from the Web

To mark Frank Lloyd Wright’s 150th birthday, many will pay tribute to the architect’s unique gifts and contributions to the field.

But Wright also had a rare nonarchitectural passion that set him apart from his mentor, Louis Sullivan, and his peers: Japanese art. Wright first became interested in his early 20s, and within a decade, he was an internationally known collector of Japanese woodblock prints.

It was an unusual turn of events for a young college dropout from rural Wisconsin. Because Wright was never actually formally trained as an architect, the inspiration he found in Japanese art and design arguably changed the trajectory of his career – and, with it, modern American architecture.

read more at smithsonianmag.com