Vintage American Modernist Cubist Abstract, unsigned, attributed to Stanton McDonald Wright, per consignor's recollections, purchased from an auction in California in 1996,
Born in Charlottesville, VA on July 8, 1890. A problem child, Stanton ran away from home on a windjammer. When his father became manager of the Arcadia Hotel on the coast at Santa Monica, he moved with his family to California in 1900.
His art studies were begun locally with Warren Hedges and Joseph Greenbaum. He soon hyphenated his last name with Macdonald to avoid being ask if he was related to the architect or the aviators. In 1909 he journeyed to Paris for further study at the Sorbonne, Académies Julian, Beaux Arts, and Colarossi. In Paris he and artist Morgan Russell developed an art style which they termed Synchromism in which color generates form.
They co-exhibited in Paris and Munich in 1913 and New York in 1914. Upon returning to the U.S. in 1916, MacDonald-Wright was active on the East Coast until his return to Los Angeles in 1918. He then turned from Synchromism to a more oriental approach to art, and produced the first full-length stop-motion film ever made in full color.
He was director of the ASL of Los Angeles from 1923-30. During the 1930s he served as regional advisor for seven states on the WPA art program. From 1942-52 he taught oriental aesthetics, art history, and iconography at UCLA. Upon retirement, he devoted full time to painting, dividing his time between Kyoto, Japan and his home in Santa Monica.
His work alternated throughout his career between pure abstractions and figural representations. Eugen Neuhaus put it succinctly in his History and Ideals of American Art, "Wright apparently attempts to correlate music with painting, as indicated in his emphasis upon strongly moving dynamic rhythms clothed in the hues of the spectrum."
A pioneer in modern art, MacDonald-Wright died in Los Angeles on Aug. 22, 1973.
Exhibition: American Modernists (LA), 1920; California Watercolor Society, 1923-25; Los Angeles County Museum of Art 1927, 1932, 1956; Art Center School (LA), 1941; North Carolina Museum, 2001 (retrospective).

26 x 22 in

10 lb