Wasmuth Portfolio

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The Wasmuth Portfolio (1910) is a two-volume collection of 100 lithographs by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his studio. Published in Germany in 1911 as Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe von Frank Lloyd Wright by Ernst Wasmuth, it features line drawings of Wright’s buildings from 1893 to 1909 and was his first work to be published anywhere in the world.

500 copies planned for the American market were burned in the Taliesin fire, delaying Wright’s full recognition in the United States.

The portfolio connected Wright’s early American architecture with the new European modernist movement. Wright spent a year in Europe (1909–1910) partly to promote the book and partly to study European architecture. His influence spread widely: Le Corbusier owned a copy, and architects Antonin Raymond, Rudolf Schindler, and Richard Neutra moved to the United States hoping to work with him. Willem Dudok’s 1924 Hilversum Town Hall shows the impact of Wright’s ideas.

At the time, Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Walter Gropius were working as apprentices at Peter Behrens’ Berlin studio, and the portfolio’s arrival reportedly caused a stir there. Wright himself claimed he learned nothing from Europe, but some scholars say he was influenced by the Vienna Secession. The Dutch De Stijl movement followed Wright’s designs a few years later, with major contributors acknowledging his influence. About half the images in the portfolio are believed to be reworkings by Marion Mahony Griffin, Wright’s former assistant, whose style helped the book succeed.

As of 2009, the Wasmuth Portfolio is available in print as Drawings and Plans of Frank Lloyd Wright: The Early Period (1893–1909).