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Home > Art > Synchromy

Synchromy

Geometric shapes of purple, pink, red, yellow, and blue with visible brushstrokes fill the canvas.
Artist

Morgan Russell

Date

1913-14

Medium

Oil on canvas

Object Type

Painting

Dimensions

H- 18 x W- 15 in. (45.7 x 38.1 cm)

Artist's Country of Birth

United States

Collecting Area

American Modernism

Credit Line

The Vilcek Foundation

Accession Number

VF2019.01.03

Copyright

© The Vilcek Foundation

Tags
color form oil painting synchromism
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Geometric shapes of purple, pink, red, yellow, and blue with visible brushstrokes fill the canvas.

About the Object

In this all-over composition, faceted planes of color fan out across the canvas. The primary colors mix with shades of orange, violet, and pink. But unlike Study for Synchromy in Blue-Violet, 1912/13 (VF2015.05.09) and A Synchromy 1913/14 (VF2015.05.12), the colors do not bleed or blend; each form is a contained block of color. There is no subject or object, no foreground or background; color is the form and the content.

 

Additional Information

Morgan Russell and Stanton Macdonald-Wright founded Synchromism (which means “with color”), a movement in which color becomes an independent expressive and formal element, in 1912 and held their first exhibitions in Munich and Paris the following year.

The Artist;
[Rose Fried Gallery, New York];
Mr. and Mrs. John D. Schiff, New York, by 1967;
[Davis & Long Company, New York];
The Ertegun Collection Group, New York;
[Terry Dintenfass, Inc., New York];
The Michael Scharf Family Collection, 1986-2019;
[Christie’s New York, May 22, 2019, sale no. 17034, lot 23]

New York. M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York. Synchromism and Color Principles in American Painting, 1910-1930, October 12-November 6, 1965, p. 52, no. 47.

New York. Museum of Modern Art. Synchromism and Color Principles in Related American Painting, 1910-1930, January 1967-June 1968.

New York. Whitney Museum of American Art; Houston, Texas. Museum of Fine Arts; Des Moines, Iowa. Des Moines Art Center; San Francisco, California. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Syracuse, New York. Everson Museum of Art; Columbus, Ohio. Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Synchromism and American Color Abstraction, 1910-1925, January 24, 1978-March 24, 1979, p. 143, pl. 91, illustrated.

New York. The Vilcek Foundation. The Synchromists, 2020-2021.

Madrid. Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional. The Synchromists. June 27-November 1, 2022.

Kushner, Marilyn S. Morgan Russell. New York, 1990, pp. 7, 101, no. 80, illustrated.

Agee, William C. et al. The Scharf Collection: A History Revealed. New York, 2018, pp. 29, 35, 181, pl. 16, illustrated.

Dorfman, John. “Over the Rainbow,” Art & Antiques, November 2020, ill. p. 45.

Tags
color form oil painting synchromism
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