Synopses & Reviews
Richard Neutra's work, his life experience, and his search for modern architecture coincided neatly with the lifespan of the modern movement. He experienced the buoyant struggles of the movement's early years, the heady triumph of its mid-century ascendancy, and the critique it faced in the 1960s and 1970s. His reputation enjoyed a resurgence that was hard to predict when Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture was first published over twenty years ago. In his seminal critical biography of this modernist master, Thomas S. Hines explores the efforts of Neutra and his modernist contemporaries to find the forms that would be most expressive of the twentieth century. In researching this classic of architectural scholarship, Hines enjoyed unparalleled access to the Neutra archives. Its collection of outstanding black-and-white photography includes a remarkable cache of photographs taken by Julius Shulman-the undisputed master of twentieth-century architectural photography-whose work is beautifully featured here. This revised edition of Richard Neutra includes a new introduction by the author. "This study, part biography, part architectural analysis, is a modern masterpiece of architectural history. The prose is lucid and sometimes elegant-very much like the work of Richard Neutra which it so brilliantly examines." -Peter Gay
About the Author
Thomas S. Hines is Professor of History and Architecture at UCLA. His books include Burnham of Chicago, Architect and Planner; William Faulkner and the Tangible Past: The Architecture of Yoknapatawpha; and Irving Gill and the Architecture of Reform. He has published essays, articles, and reviews in many publications including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Architectural Record, and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Hines has held Guggenheim, NEH, and Getty fellowships. In 1994 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.