Works by John Yeon, the godfather of Pacific Northwest modernism, go on view at the Portland Art Museum

John Yeon (1910-1994) was a godfather of Pacific Northwest architecture. His 1937 Watzek House garnered international attention when the Museum of Modern Art included it in the 1939 book Art of Our Time and the 1944 traveling exhibition Built in USA. The modern house, which now serves as the John Yeon Center for Architecture and the Landscape, was built with local woods and references historical styles. Providing a counterpoint to the International Style lauded by Philip Johnsonand Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Yeon’s work was prescient of the regional influences that would soon disrupt modernism’s taut white boxes.