Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1890-1973) was an American artist, specifically a painter. He was born in Virginia, USA. He studied in Paris, where he encountered such famous artists as Picasso, Matisse and Cézanne. At this time, he met another US artists, Morgan Russel, and they invented 'Synchronism', an art movement which wants to create emotion with colour. In 1915, during WW1, he left the Parisian art world for the new New York art world, and after for southern California, to which he brought the 'gospel' of modern art, and established the first exposition of modern art in Los Angeles.
He was one of the first occidental (western) artists to become interested in Zen and oriental art and culture. In his later years, more and more frequently he visited Japan. He relinquished his abstract style, and had a period of figurative pictures, inspired by (and using) Japanese forms and colours. In the final years of his life, he returned to Synchronism, but his colours were more clement, tranquil and contemplative; much inspired by the Japanese art and philosophy.
Stanton Macdonald-Wright was born 1890, in Chalottesville, Virginia, USA. His father was an amateur painter, and encouraged the young Stanton's interest in art. When Stanton was 10 years old, the family moved to Santa Monica, California. Resisting his family's pressure to aim for a career in medicine, Stanton attempted (unsuccessfully) to run away to Japan, and (successfully) to study Art in Los Angeles.
In 1907, aged seventeen and married (last year) to a well-off woman of 27 years, he went to Paris, to enjoy the bohemian life of the avant garde artist (though without the usually associated poverty). He later says 'I felt at home in European traditions because, [...] I [had] had to speak French always at dinner and Spanish at lunch, so I was really trilingual as a kid'. He also studied at various art institutions, including the Sorbonne, where he met Henri Focillion, who introduced him to oriental art and philosophy.
It is worth noting that 1907 is the year Picasso painted 'Les Damoiselles d'Avignon', the painting considered to signify the birth of modern art. Stanton collected art, including works by Cèzanne, by whom he was (like everyone else, it must be said) heavily influenced.
In 1911, he visited London, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Dordrecht, Antwerp and Brussels. He met Morgan Russel, another US expatriate. Russel took him to the atelier of Percyval Tudor-Harte, an English colour-theorist and painter (and, according to Stanton 'perfectly stark-raving mad'). The two studied and worked with Tudor-Harte, and studied colour-theory profoundly.
Stanton and Russel attended the various soirées of Gertrude and Leo Stein, where Stanton met Picasso, Rodin, and Matisse. He also knew Man Ray and many other now-famous artists in Paris at that time.
In 1912, when Vorticism was coming of age in England, and Cubism was in its most productive phase, Stanton and Russel founded Synchronism, an abstract offshoot of cubism that considered colour to be the raw material of art. It closely resembles the Orphism practiced by Robert Delauney at the same time. This seems to have been pointed out before, and Stanton rebukes:
Like Kandinsky, Vorticism, and other then-contemporary abstract artists and movements, Synchomism explained itself in terms of music. Synchronist paintings were called 'Synchronies', a word which closely resembles 'Symphonies'.
In 1913, Stanton and Russel held two two-man expositions, one in Munich, the other in Paris. The pair then moved to New York, and Stanton separated from his wife. The next year, 1914, they shared another exposition in New York. In their introduction in the exhibition catalogue, they wrote:
In 1918, he left New York, and moved back home to Los Angeles, California.1 Earlier Influences and Europe (1890 – 1912)
– Stanton, speaking in 1964
– Stanton, speaking in 1964
[he moves on to the similarities]
– Stanton, speaking in 1964
– Will South, Curator, 'Color, Myth, and Music: Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Synchromism'2 The War Period (1913 – 1918)
– Stanton Macdonald-Wright & Morgan Russel
They then moved back to Paris, and on to London due to the war. They stay with Stanton's older brother, Willard Huntington-Wright. In 1915 Stanton and Willard co-author and publish a book, 'Modern Art: Its Tendency and Meaning'. They then move to New York, USA, and the brothers both help to organise an ambitious but disappointing group exposition: 'The Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters'. Stanton did some teaching work, and had a solo exhibition in 1917, although little sold.