{"data":{"id":"816","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":816,"topgoose_id":1281,"tms_id":816,"display_name":"Stanton Macdonald-Wright","sort_name":"Macdonald-Wright Stanton","display_date":"1890–1973","begin_date":"1890","end_date":"1973","biography":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1913 Stanton Macdonald-Wright established himself as a pioneer of modernist abstraction. That year, he debuted an abstract, kaleidoscopic method of painting that he had developed together with his colleague \u003ca href=\"/artists/1139\"\u003eMorgan Russell\u003c/a\u003e while living in Paris. They called their movement Synchromism, a term that means \u003cem\u003ewith\ncolor\u003c/em\u003e. Rooted in various color theories, particularly those of Macdonald-Wright and Russell’s teacher, the Canadian artist Ernest Percyval Tudor-Hart, Synchromism identified color as the generating element of form, volume, and movement. For both artists, color was an abstract tool for conveying mood and emotion; as with musical scales, a spectrum of colors could be combined to achieve a harmonious arrangement. Macdonald-Wright and Russell earned critical acclaim following their landmark Synchromist exhibitions in Paris and Munich in 1913, but the advent of World War I led to the end of their partnership.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBy 1916, Macdonald-Wright was\nback in the United States, where he\neschewed his earlier nonobjective style\nin favor of semiabstract, vibrantly\nhued compositions with suggestions of\nfigurative imagery, such as\u003ca href=\"/collection/works/1521\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;Oriental –\nSynchromy in Blue-green\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e. Years later, the\nartist recalled that this painting was\nbased on a group of figures smoking opium,\na subject related to his incipient interest\nin Eastern aesthetics and philosophy\n(he would spend the later decades of his\ncareer teaching these subjects at the\nUniversity of California, Los Angeles). As in\na hazy, drug-induced reverie, the hints of\nfigurative imagery—a face, an arm, a thigh—\nseem to appear momentarily before\ndissolving into the layered, shifting planes\nof form and gently feathered hues.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":false,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500007154","wikidata_id":"Q2348151","created_at":"2017-08-30T16:17:08.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-11T07:01:48.027-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/816/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/816/exhibitions"}}}}