Synchromy No. 3

1917

Although this abstract composition bears many traces of European Cubism—angular shapes, fragmented forms, and multiple perspectives—it asserts the primacy of color as a key component of space and form. In 1912 Stanton Macdonald-Wright, together with the painter Morgan Russell, coined the term Synchromism to describe abstract compositions primarily concerned with the rhythmic use of color—a phenomenon they likened to a symphony’s use of sound. Synchromism was one of many diverse approaches to abstraction that flourished in the Americas and Europe in the 1910s, radically departing from traditional vocabularies of painting and sculpture.