Gestation #2, Kyoto

Maker Stanton Macdonald-Wright (American, 1890 - 1973)

Collections

American Paintings Selections

ClassificationsPAINTINGS

Date1963

Mediumoil on gessoed mahogany plywood

Dimensions24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm.) frame: 29 × 25 in. (73.7 × 63.5 cm.)

Description

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Lorraine and Arnold Chanin, MFA, M.D.

Status

Not on view

Label TextThis late-career painting represents Stanton MacDonald-Wright's return to Synchromism, a style that he and Morgan Russell had developed in Europe in 1913 and that became the first modern art movement founded by Americans. Synchromism was an attempt to create an abstract art entirely through color. MacDonald-Wright and Russell made paintings as composers do music, with colors serving as the equivalent of notes. In this work, MacDonald-Wright selected the complementary colors blue and orange as the dominant key, with related colors providing harmony. Because warm colors are perceived as being closer than cool colors, Synchromist paintings have a three-dimensional quality.
In 1919, MacDonald-Wright moved to Los Angeles, where he taught at the University of California, Los Angeles for many years. His teaching and exhibitions of his work exposed a generation of California artists to Modernism.

Object number2004.16