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FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
Forerunner to Modernism

Conference
October 13 - 14 October, 2007
Frank Lloyd Wright and
the organic architecture of today

Guests:
Eric Lloyd Wright (Malibu, California),
Arthur Dyson (Fresno, California)
Fred Stitt (San Francisco)
Brian Spencer (California)
Aldo Loris Rossi (Napoli)
Mario Galvagni (Milano)

Centro Studi Santa Maria Maddalena - Volterra



e
Exhibition

September 29 - October 28,2007

Villa Palagione

Opening hours:10 am -7 pm, Admission free
Inauguration of the exhibition:
September 29, 11 am.

 

Art Exhibition
October 16 - 25, 2007
Frank Lloyd Wright -
the Romantic Spirit

photographs by Carol Bishop,
Los Angeles.
Cantine del Palazzo Minucci/Solaini - Volterra
Opening hours: 10 am -7 pm, Admission free

 


Frank Lloyd Wright is one of the great visionaries of the twentieth century whose influence will continue to be relevant throughout the 21st century.
His innovative buildings, unconventional ideas and philosophy of "Organic Architecture" helped introduce the principles of modern architecture to the world.
Frank Lloyd Wright`s explorations inspired by nature are humane, environmental, and democratic.
This framework for life is timeless and becomes increasingly relevant as we move towards the goal of global sustainability.


This exhibition in Volterra arose from a desire to honor the architect and artist Frank Lloyd Wright on the occasion of his one hundred and fortieth birthday. Frank Lloyd Wright: Forerunner to Modernism was organized by the association Amici di Frank Lloyd Wright and the International Culture Center Villa Palagione in cooperation with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, Arizona.
The exhibit will be held at the Villa Palagione situated close to the Tuscan city of Volterra, an area Wright himself enjoyed during his first trip to Europe in 1909-10. The retrospective on this architectural visionary will be a multimedia presentation of pictures, films, drawings, and models, presented in Italian and English so as to reach as wide an audience as possible.

ORGANIZED BY
 
"Amici di
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT"

Associazione culturale
 
Villa Palagione
Centro Interculturale

UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF
 
Consul General of
the United States of America in Florence
 
The City of Volterra

KINDLY SUPPORTED BY
Cassa di Risparmio di Volterra
Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Volterra
Friends of Kebyar, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia
ADAO - Amici dell’Architettura Organica
iiC-Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Los Angeles
Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, Arizona


FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

The year 2007 marks the 140th anniversary of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright's birth (1867 - 1959).
The exhibit, Frank Lloyd Wright: Forerunner of Modernism, was developed to celebrate this anniversary and to honor one of the most outstanding personalities of the 20th century, one whose enormous influence on modern culture overshadowed even the most talented of his international contemporaries.
Frank Lloyd Wright lived during an era of



extra-ordinary technological and social change bracketed in the 19th century by the end of the American Civil War and in the 20th by the beginning of the space age.
Where others hesitated, he embraced the opportunities provided by the scientific advances of his age to create a new architectural vision, one that recognized and honestly exploited the true nature of the new materials - steel, concrete, glass, and composite materials - both structurally and aesthetically.


Wright also believed architecture had a spiritual dimension and he sought to create environments characterized by beauty, tranquility, and harmony that would nourish the lives of those sheltered within. He called his architecture "organic" and described it as that "great living creative spirit which from generation to generation, from age to age, proceeds, persists, creates, according to the nature of man and his circumstances as they both change." Wright believed that Nature, which he spelled with a capital 'N,' was all of the body of God that man
  would ever see andhe treated it with a deep respect that is clearly reflected in all his works.Among the works included in the exhibition, one sees it especially in his own homes, Taliesin and Taliesin West, which seem to grow from their sites as if they were idealized patterns of their landscapes.And Fallingwater, perhaps the most famous house in the world, a sublime modern structure of glass and limestone, rises in elegant seclusion above a waterfall in rural Pennsylvania, blending perfectly with its natural surroundings.


Other Wright icons included in the exhibition are the modest Usonian Jacobs house in Madison, Wisconsin - a example of low cost buildings, the streamlined and light-flooded S. C. Johnson and Son Administration Building and Research Tower in Racine, Wisconsin - a forward-looking model for humane work places, the Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and the spiraling Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
Frank Lloyd Wright was the greatest of the architectural pioneers of the twentieth century,
  blazing trails and challenging men and technology to ever higher achievement.During the seventy years he devoted his life to architecture, he created over 1,100 designs nearly half of which were realized. These included government and commercial buildings, hotels, apartment towers, recreational complexes, museums, religious houses, residences for the wealthy and those of more modest income, decorative pieces, furniture and lighting features, textiles, and art glass.


Wright's mission was to create a truly American architecture, one appropriate for free citizens that would reflect the democratic values of the United States in which he so firmly believed. But his genius was not confined to America.
The "cause of architecture" he espoused had international appeal
 

and both he and his work have been widely celebrated.
During his lifetime, Frank Lloyd Wright was honored worldwide and posthumous honors continue to be awarded by architectural organizations and through publications, documentaries and exhibitions see throughout the world.


Impressum:
Associazione culturale AMICI DI FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
Sede sociale: Villa Palagione - Centro Interculturale, Loc. Palagione,
I 56048 Volterra (Pi), info@villa-palagione.org
Photos: Giuliano Chelazzi, Gerhard Wahl, B/W Photos: Chicago History Museum