MACDONALD-WRIGHT, STANTON

born July 8, 1890, Charlottesville, Va., U.S. died Aug. 22, 1973, Pacific Palisades, Calif. painter and teacher, one of the first American Abstract painters, who in 191314 founded with Morgan Russell the movement known as Synchromism (q.v.), which proclaimed colour to be the basis of expression in painting. In 1907 Macdonald-Wright went to Paris to study, and there he became intrigued with the colour theory of the optical scientists Chevreul and Helmholtz and with the formal abstractions of the Cubist painters. The earliest Synchromist pictures were renderings of traditional subjects in a representational manner but with vibrant colours. Eventually Macdonald-Wright's pictures became absolute colour abstractions. By 1920, however, his art was no longer avant-garde and had become a compromise between Synchromist abstraction and a traditional representational style. His attention eventually turned away from painting and toward filmmaking, writing, and teaching art history at the University of California. During the Depression he was again active as a painter and directed and executed WPA projects in the realistic style of American Regionalism. Of these, his murals for the Santa Monica City Hall and Public Library (1935) are most notable.