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Hollyhock House and Olive Hill:
Frank Lloyd Wright and Edmund Teske
Hollyhock House and Olive Hill: Frank Lloyd Wright and
Edmund Teske exhibition is organized by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and is made possible by the generosity of Mr. David Devine
This exhibition presents more than two-dozen Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) drawings for the legendary Olive Hill project in Hollywood, California, including Wright’s famed Hollyhock House, built in 1922. It also features twenty-two photographs of the site made by celebrated photographer Edmund Teske in the 1940s.
When Aline Barnsdall (1882–1946) commissioned Wright to assist with plans for her property, she had in mind a grand performing arts complex. She wanted to create an arts center with a performing arts theater, restaurant, artist studios and her residence. Her progressive vision is detailed in Wright’s sketches showing plans for many unrealized features of what was to have become the precursor of today’s community visual arts complex.
Wright’s sketches detail her pioneering plans for what would have become the precursor for today’s community visual arts complex. The project was partly but never fully realized. Wright did design and build Hollyhock House (her private residence) and two additional buildings, Residences A and B. The first two still stand while the last was demolished in 1954. The sketches afford a glimpse into the mind of one of the most influential and popular architects of the twentieth century, and shed light on Barnsdall’s vision of the ideal arts facility .
Some twenty years later, photographer and Chicago native Edmund Teske (1922–1996), came to Los Angeles. Teske had worked for Wright at Taliesen, and was eager to see the Olive Hill project. He met Barnsdall who invited him to live and work in Residence B where he resided from 1944 until 1949.
Teske’s photographs of Olive Hill from this period document the property and demonstrate his characteristic dreamlike style of composite imagery. The exhibition includes twenty-two of Teske’s photographs evoking the atmosphere of Wright’s Inca inspired design.
Image:
Frank Lloyd Wright, Perspective, Community Playhouse, The Little Dipper (West facade), 1923, graphite and colored pencil on paper. Courtesy of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
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