SYNCHRONISM

S Y N C H R O N I S M

 Synchronism was an art movement founded in 1912 by American artists Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Morgan Russell. Their abstract "synchronies", based on a theory of color that analogized it to music, were among the first abstract paintings in American art. Synchronism became the first American avant-garde art movement to receive international attention.
   Synchronism is based on the idea that color and sound are similar phenomena, and that the colors in a painting can be orchestrated in the same harmonious way that a composer arranges notes in a symphony. Macdonald-Wright and Russell believed that by painting in color scales, their work could evoke musical sensations.
   The earliest synchronist works were similar to Fauvist paintings. The multicolored shapes of synchronist paintings also resembled those found in orphism.

  Patrick Henry Bruce (1881-1936) was an American cubist painter. Bruce exhibited regularly in the Salon d'Automne, and met many of the leading artists of the early twentieth century avant garde. During a period of close friendship with Sonia and Robert Delaunay in 1912–14 his paintings were influenced by Orphism, but Bruce never formed an attachment to any school.