Olgivanna Lloyd Wright

Olgivanna Lloyd Wright was the third and final wife of Frank Lloyd Wright and had significant influence in his life and work, due in part to to her extensive Theosophical associations. While her "language, cultural background and upbringing were almost exotically alien to his own," she was critical in in introducing Wright to Greek-Armenian mystic G. I. Gurdjieff.

Biographical Snapshot

Olga (Olgivanna) Ivanovna Lazovich Hinzenburg was a Serbian born in Montenegro on 27 December 1898. She was the grand daughter of a famous Serbian/Montenegrin writer, tribe leader, Montenegrin duke and hero Marko Miljanov. A long-time pupil of and devotee to G. I. Gurdjieff (even after her involvement with Wright), she was also a nurse to Katherine Mansfield on her deathbed at G. I. Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at the Prieuré des Basses Loges on 9 January 1923.

Olgivanna continued to run Wright's Taliesin Fellowship long after Wright's death, from 9 April 1959 until her own death in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1985. The last quarter-century of Wright's life--his Arizona years with Oglivanna, from 1932 to 1959--were arguably his most productive, representing "more than half of [Wright's] building" and including the authorship of his autobiography.

Embroiled in scandal and controversy from the beginning of their relationship (since both were married at its start), Oglivanna's 'posthumous notoriety' 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 Wright was Olgivanna's only child with Wright.

Bibliography

• The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship by Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman, 2006, includes especially extensive and strong documentation on Olgivanna, her relationship with Wright, including "the strong influence the occultist Georgi Gurdjieff had on Wright and especially his wife Oglivanna"
• Taliesin Reflections: My Years Before, During and After Living with Frank Lloyd Wright by Earl Nisbet, 2006.[4]
• Frank Lloyd Wright: His Life, His Work, His Words by Olgivanna Lloyd Wright. Horizon Press, 1966.