Wright Auction

Santiago Calatrava’s Milwaukee Art Museum expansion, completed in 2001, is a masterpiece of dynamic, sculptural architecture. The design features the iconic Quadracci Pavilion, with its soaring, bird-like Burke Brise Soleil, a movable sunshade that opens and closes like wings, symbolizing motion and transformation. Calatrava’s innovative use of glass and steel creates light-filled spaces that blend harmoniously with the surrounding lakefront. This bold and futuristic addition has become a cultural and architectural landmark, reflecting Calatrava’s vision of merging art, engineering, and nature.

Wright is proud to offer architectural drawings from the collection of a major real estate developer and self-described Baby Boomer who was witness to the dramatic transformation of American and global architecture in the last half century. The collection, previously displayed in an Aldo Rossi-designed home gallery alongside important works of contemporary art, offers a visual survey of over a century of progress in architectural design. Primarily sourced from groundbreaking gallerist Max Protetch—who was in large part responsible with elevating architectural sketches to the status of fine art—these works possess not only historic value, but they comprise an increasingly scarce genre as CAD software, and other modeling tools, have made the practice of drawing by hand much less common.

This is a rare and extraordinary opportunity to own one-of-a-kind drawings from a visionary collector who passionately champions architects as the ultimate artists—masters of shaping the future through their transformative designs of buildings, furniture, decorative objects, and beyond. Over the past thirty years, this collector meticulously assembled a selection of exemplary works from the most influential figures in 20th-century architecture, culminating in a remarkable offering that captures over a century of architectural innovation and artistry.

The evolution of architecture from the late 19th century to the present reflects an intricate balance of form, function, and cultural identity.

The evolution of architecture from the late 19th century to the present reflects an intricate balance of form, function, and cultural identity. Modern architecture, spearheaded by pioneers like Louis Sullivan in the late-19th century, saw the advent of skyscrapers and the dramatic remaking of urban landscapes. Sullivan famously devised the principle, “form follows function,” which his protégé Frank Lloyd Wright elaborated through the organic architecture of his Prairie Style homes and other projects, emphasizing harmony with nature and geometric motifs. Among the works in this collection is a ceiling coffer stencil from the Adler and Sullivan-designed Chicago Stock Exchange as well as works from Wright's iconic Wasmuth Portfolio and a sketch for the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Most prominent architects within this period had to pay their dues over time, in some cases not earning notable commissions until later in life.

The mid-20th century ushered in the International Style, characterized by clean lines, industrial materials, and functional elegance. Figures such as Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Eero Saarinen, Bertrand Goldberg, and Philip Johnson epitomized the sculpturally informed manifestation of Modernism within architecture. Simultaneously, innovators like R. Buckminster Fuller explored new horizons with geodesic domes and lightweight, sustainable designs that foreshadowed today’s green architecture.

Postmodernism swept through the world of architecture, propeled by the boundless optimism of the Space Age, epitomized by the moon landing, and the cultural upheaval sparked by the Beatles in the 1960s. Rejecting the rigid minimalism of Modernism, a new wave of architects—Baby Boomers themselves—ushered in a bold era of creativity in the 1980s. Historical references and playful eclecticism became their signatures, with iconic firms like Disney and IBM fueling their experiments. Visionaries such as Michael Graves, Robert Stern, and Arata Isozaki embraced this dynamic approach, while Robert Venturi famously declared, “Less is a bore.”

The architectural narrative then shifted to the fragmented and avant-garde ethos of Deconstructivism, championed by innovators like Bernard Tschumi, Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, and Daniel Libeskind. Today, architects such as Tadao Ando, Santiago Calatrava, and Renzo Piano continue to push boundaries, weaving sustainability, innovation, and artistry into the fabric of global design.

Selected architectural drawings by the aforementioned luminaries and other groundbreaking figures are presently available, showcasing the visionary designs that transformed architecture into an enduring art form. These works stand as a tribute to the timeless—and increasingly rare—craft of hand-drawn architectural sketches.