Bought and Sold Japanese Prints
Frank Lloyd Wright’s love of Japanese art and culture went beyond his architecture. He was an active, prolific dealer of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints. He appreciated the structural honesty in their minimalist lines, geometric structures, and how they conveyed a story in an efficient manner. These prints, to Wright, showed order and the organization of smaller elements into a greater structural unity. He collected the prints during his trips to Japan. He brought them home and set up a presentation to display the works at the Art Institute of Chicago. Legend has it that he made more money from selling the art than from his architecture practice. He sold them to private collectors but also lucrative customers like the Metropolitan Museum of Art. By the time he passed away in 1959, Wright had a collection of 6,000 Japanese woodblock prints.