Synchromism
Description
Synchromism was an art movement founded in 1912 by American artists Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1890–1973) and Morgan Russell (1886–1953). Their abstract "synchromies," based on an approach to painting that analogized color to music, were among the first abstract paintings in American art. Though it was short-lived and did not attract many adherents, Synchromism became the first American avant-garde art movement to receive international attention.
One of the difficulties inherent in describing Synchromism as a coherent style is connected to the fact that some Synchromist works are purely abstract while others include representational imagery. Read more ↗
Key Artists
Morgan Russell
Co-founder of Synchromism who formulated its core theoretical analogies between musical chords and color scales, painting monumental abstract canvases exhibited in Paris and New York.
Stanton Macdonald-Wright
Co-founder and passionate polemicist of Synchromism who developed scientific color scales based on advancing yellow-orange hues and receding blue-violets to construct sculptural three-dimensional form.
Thomas Hart Benton
Associated American painter in Paris who briefly embraced Synchromist color theory during his early modernist phase between 1914 and 1917 before turning to Regionalist American realism.
Patrick Henry Bruce
American modernist in Paris who exhibited with Russell and Macdonald-Wright, utilizing structural Synchromist color blocks to construct monumental still lifes and geometric abstractions.
Arthur B. Davies
President of the 1913 Armory Show and prominent American painter who adopted Synchromist prismatic color facets during the late 1910s to energize his frieze-like compositions of dancing nudes.
Jan Matulka
Czech-American modernist who absorbed Synchromism in New York and Paris, applying high-keyed color scales and rhythmic geometric planes to energetic landscapes and still lifes.
Famous Artworks
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Fun Facts
When Morgan Russell and Stanton Macdonald-Wright launched Synchromism in Paris and Munich in 1913, they published aggressively combative exhibition catalogues mocking Robert Delaunay's rival Orphism movement as superficial and unscientific, claiming only Synchromists understood true color orchestration.
↗ Source: britannica.com
Morgan Russell's monumental 1913–1914 painting 'Synchromy in Orange: To Form' - measuring over eleven feet wide - was explicitly designed to translate the spatial rhythms and contrapposto torsion of Michelangelo's famous sculpture 'The Dying Slave' purely into vibrating, advancing and receding color scales.
↗ Source: buffaloakg.org