July Fourth, 1927 by Frank Lloyd Wright

Originally created as a cover for Liberty magazine, this design was actually published on the July 1937 cover of Town and Country magazine.

Hailed by the American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time," Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) used innovative abstract decorative motifs at a time when ornate floral patterns were the norm. This gravitation toward the geometry of modernism led Wright to an informed appreciation of avant-garde graphic art that was coming to the fore in the early twentieth century - largely in European publications. In the mid-1920s, Wright offered Liberty magazine a year's worth of semi-abstract cover designs, but Liberty never accepted or rejected the proposal. Wright got his presentation drawings back, and they became the basis of later, fully executed designs in diverse media.