Color, Myth, and Music: Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Synchromism, LACMA Press Release 2001August 5 through October 28, 2001, 1973, 1900s
Macdonald-Wright's mural in Santa Monica Public Library.
"When Stanton Macdonald-Wright arrived in Santa Monica in 1900, he and it were very young. He was 10. The little beach town had just marked its 25th year and had only 3,000 residents.
"Archibald Wright and Annie Wright moved to Santa Monica from Charlottesville, Virginia with their two sons, Willard, 13, and Stanton, 10, when Wright, having sold his Virginia properties, took a job as manager of the Arcadia Hotel, then said to be the finest hotel on the Southern California coast.
"A number of remarkable people have made their marks in Santa Monica, but arguably none is quite as remarkable as Stanton Macdonald-Wright.
A Prince of a Boy
"Young Stanton believed that he was a prince, read voraciously, studied with tutors, caroused with other renegades, attended the Art Students' League of Los Angeles, worked briefly and unmemorably in a doctor's office and department store and, at 17, married the first of his five wives.
"His wife was older than he, and rich, and they soon left Santa Monica for Paris where he attended classes at the Sorbonne and studied painting at several traditional academies. But he soon abandoned formal study to explore the radical new approaches of Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism, and Orphism that were then emerging and challenging traditional art. It was then that he met Morgan Russell and was introduced to Matisse, Rodin, Percyval Tudor-Hart, a Canadian painter and color theorist, and collectors Gertrude and Leo Stein.
"On August 4, the first full retrospective of Macdonald-Wright's work will open at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). He was one of America's early modernist masters, and the exhibition (which will run through October 28), Color, Myth and Music: Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Synchromism examines the evolution of his art from his important Synchromist works, continues with his masterful Asian-influenced paintings, and offers a selection of the stunning synchromies painted in the final years of his life. Spanning six decades, the exhibition includes more than 60 works and much archival material."