Southern California's premier modern and contemporary art museum.

Stanton Macdonald-Wright
Untitled (Vase of Flowers), 1924
Oil on canvas
24 x 20 inches
LAM/OCMA Art Collection Trust, Museum purchase with funds provided through prior gift of Lois Outerbridge
LAM.1998.003.A

In 1913, during Stanton Macdonald Wright's Parisian period, he and fellow painter Morgan Russell developed Synchromism, a modern movement characterized by brilliant, harmonious color; formal innovation; and subjective emotion. The untitled still life combines Macdonald-Wright's Synchromist palette of pure, jewel-like hues with the naturalist tendencies he incorporated into his art after returning to California in 1919. The composition's subtle fracturing of form is derived from Cubism, while the brilliant hues echo Fauvism. Initially inspired by Michelangelo's serpentine sculptural forms, the artist expressed his fascination with rhythmic movement in the shifting planes of color that rise up around the flowers.