Synchromism
About
Synchromism’s principal founders, Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell, believed that color in art should be like a musical composition: rhythmic, sensational, and fully abstract. To achieve this, the Synchromist painters invented their own color theory linking the color spectrum to the musical scale that was inspired by the sensory phenomenon of synesthesia—the condition whereby a person can hear a color or see a sound. Synchromist works combined the fractured forms of Cubism with a new emphasis on color, becoming the first American abstract movement to gain international attention. American Regionalist Thomas Hart Benton and Ashcan painter Arthur Bowen Davies both participated in this short-lived movement, which lasted from 1913 until 1919.
