Olgivanna Lloyd Wright

Olgivanna Lloyd Wright (December 27, 1898 – March 1, 1985) was the third and last wife of the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. They met in November 1924 and married in 1928. Together they established the Taliesin Fellowship, an architectural apprentice programme and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. After Frank's death in 1959, Olgivanna became president of the foundation, a position she held until one month before her own death.

Early life Olga Ivanovna (also known as Olgivanna) Lazović was born on December 27, 1898, in Cetinje, Montenegro.

Her parents were Jovan Lazović, who served as Montenegro's first Chief Justice, and Milica Markov Popović, the daughter of Field Marshal Marko Miljanov, a Montenegrin writer, voivode, and leader of the Kuči tribe. Milica enlisted as a volunteer in the Serbian Army, pretending to be a man. Olgivanna was the youngest of five children, with two brothers and two sisters. When her father lost his sight, Olgivanna would read court documents to him. When she was 9, Olgivanna went to live with her sister Julia and her husband, Constantin Siberakov, in Russia.

Career In Russia, Olgivanna met Vladimar Hinzenberg. They married in 1917, when Olgivanna was 19.

In 1917, following the birth of her daughter Svetlana, Olgivanna met G. I. Gurdjieff. She left Hinzenberg and Svetlana to follow Gurdjieff to France. Olgivanna spent roughly seven years working with Gurdjieff. She began as his student, learning Gurdjieff movements, which she later taught to her own students, including Diana Huebert. In 1923, while in France, Olgivanna nursed Katherine Mansfield on her deathbed.

In August 1924, Gurdjieff was involved in a car accident. He encouraged Olgivanna to go to the United States to join Hinzenberg and Svetlana, who was at her brother's home in New Jersey. After a short while, Olgivanna realized that the marriage was over, so she went to Chicago and taught Gurdjieff movements to the children of her friends. In late November 1924, she met Frank Lloyd Wright at a Sunday matinee featuring dancer Tamara Karsavina. Wright wrote about this chance meeting her 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 and without artificial hesitation.

I was in love with her.

It was as simple as that.

Both were married, but they quickly began a romantic relationship, and Olgivanna and Svetlana came to live with Wright at Taliesin, in Wisconsin. By February 1925, Olgivanna was pregnant with their daughter, Iovanna. In April 1925, an electrical fire destroyed Taliesin's living quarters. Wright's estranged second wife refused to divorce Wright. In October 1926, Olgivanna and Wright were arrested in Tonka Bay, Minnesota, and accused of violating the Mann Act, but the charges were later dropped. Wright got a divorce in 1927. He and Olgivanna married on August 25, 1928, in Rancho Santa Fe, California, and honeymooned in Phoenix.

The Taliesin Fellowship In 1932, Frank and Olgivanna started the Taliesin Fellowship, an architectural apprentice program.

In his book Apprentice to Genius: Years With Frank Lloyd Wright, Edgar Tafel wrote that the "marriage to Olgivanna was a tremendous stabilizing element for [Wright] — her devotion and strength brought his genius forward again. She knew how to take care of him." The last quarter-century of Wright's life (1935–59), when he, Olgivanna and the Taliesin Fellowship spent their winters in Arizona building Taliesin West, have been argued to be his most productive.

Tafel, who was in the Fellowship from 1932 to 1941, also wrote that Olgivanna's background with Gurdjieff and his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Mangave 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 in 1959.

In 1970, she invited Svetlana Alliluyeva, the youngest child and only daughter of Joseph Stalin, to Taliesin West, the winter compound of the Taliesin Fellowship. Alliluyeva met William Wesley "Wes" Peters there. They married three weeks later and stayed married for 20 months. (Peters had previously been married to Olgivanna's daughter Svetlana, who died in a car accident in 1946.) Alliluyeva came away with a less-than-glowing impression of Olgivanna and her management of Taliesin: 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, and 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.

Death Olgivanna died in Scottsdale, Arizona, on March 1, 1985 at the age of 86.