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The early Modern architect Adolf Loos (Brno, 1870-Vienna, 1933) was a cultural reformer and revolutionary. His clients included writers and artists, among them Tristan Tzara, Josephine Baker, and his close friends Peter Altenberg, Arnold Schönberg, and Karl Kraus. His students including Rudolf Schindler, Richard Neutra, Heinrich Kulka, Jacques Groag, Giussepe De Finetti, and Zladko Neumann impacted architecture in the United States, New Zealand, and across Europe.
During his lifetime, Loos designed, built, and remodeled close to one hundred apartments and homes, and undertook large civic projects like schools, government buildings, and workers housing. He revolutionized architecture with his innovation of spatial design, the Raumplan. To this day Loos works remain tourist attractions cafés, bars, and shops can be visited in Vienna; as well, several homes including the Villa Müller and the Khuner House, are open to the public. Over a century after he began to work, the ideas embodied in his architecture and writing remain of vital interest.
BACK FLAP:
Claire Beck Loos was the last wife of the great Modern master. She was a photographer and writer, born in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia in 1904. Her immediate and extended families were significant early clients of Loos.
Claire Beck Loos intimate knowledge of the man and the architect are captured here in lively, often-humorous vignettes. More like snapshots than historiography, the contents of her book will be revealing to all those with an interest in the architect and his era. Proclaimed as valuable, and a document humain by the Viennese Neue Freie Presse in 1935, the book was meant to raise funds for Loos tomb, and has since become a literary memorial. It is also a self-portrait of a rebellious young woman whose untimely death reverberates with the weight of history.
Adolf Loos A Private Portrait is the first English edition of the book that has already enjoyed several reprints in German. It provides new information about Adolf Loos personal life, his cultural milieu, and the personality that helped to shape early Modern architecture.