Synchromy

The highly conceptual theories behind Morgan Russell's Synchromist paintings distinguish them as some of the most important Modernist inventions of the twentieth century. Russell began his professional life as an architect, but abandoned that career to become an artist as soon as he arrived in Paris on his twentieth birthday in 1906. At this time, the bold color and forceful lines of the artists of the Fauve movement were astonishing the art world. From this point onward, as Russell developed his artistic style, color became increasingly important to him, taking on new significance. In an introduction written for the catalogue for their 1913 Bernheim-Jeune exhibition, Russell and his friend and fellow artist Stanton Macdonald-Wright "stated that their art was different from anything else presently being done. As synchromists, they wrote, they were not interested in color as a means to copy the 'literal likeness' of an object: 'our dream for color is of a nobler task. It is the very quality of form that we mean to express and reveal through it.'" (M.S. Kushner, Morgan Russell, New York, 1990, p. 69)