Claire Beck Loos

Who is Claire Beck Loos?

Claire Beck Loos was a photographer and writer, born in 1904 in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia. She was the third wife of early modern Czechoslovak-Viennese architect Adolf Loos.

Claire Beck's immediate and extended relations - the Beck, Hirsch, Turnowsky and Kraus families - and friends the Semmlers, were some of Loos' first clients. They hired him to remodel apartment interiors in Pilsen and Vienna, and it was there that Loos first began to open up the "interstitial spaces" between walls to create continuous rooms. These projects, among others, are highlighted in the traveling exhibition "Learning to Dwell: Adolf Loos in the Czech Lands" sponsored by the City of Prague Museum, which opened in Prague in 2008 and has travelled to Brno, Czech Republic; Torino, Italy; and the Royal Institute of British Architects in London.

Claire and Loos were engaged after Loos invited the Beck family to see a Josephine Baker performance in Vienna in the spring of 1929. They had a short and rushed engagement, due to her parents' opposition. They were married in Vienna on 18 July 1929. She was thirty-five years younger than he was. Because it was a mixed marriage, the Jewish community refused to execute the marriage. Loos and Claire were divorced on 30 April 1932.