June 6, 2018 - Olgivanna married Frank in 1928 and became not only his wife but his collaborator who continued to run the Flank Lloyd Right Foundation and the Taliesin West School of Architecture after his death. Before that, she was married to Vlademar Hinzenberg, a Russian architect. She had a daughter, Svetlana, from her first marriage, and with Frank, she had Ioanna who died in 2015.
Olgivanna was under the great influence of George Gurdjieff, the Armenian-born mystic who shaped her beliefs. Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva was part of the matriarchate community at Taliesin West, which she later described in her "The Faraway Music" book, as a very strange experience.
Her admirers saw her matriarchal strength as a necessary counterbalance to her husband's wildly creative and often chaotic temperament.
"She was the outspoken defender of all her husband's work, seeking to protect it from wrecking balls and owners bent on changing his facades and interiors."
New York Times
Olgivanna died of heart attack at 85 in Scottsdale, Arizona, where she lived at the Taliesin West Museum.
