Synchromism

Synchromism was a Paris-based movement founded in 1912-1913 by American artists, Stanton MacDonald Wright and Morgan Russell. The movement was based on the arrangement of colors in harmonius and musical patterns. The first Synchromist work by Russell - Synchromy in Green, was exhibited at the Salon des Independants in 1913.

    Morgan Russell

Archaic Composition No. 1

Morgan Russell was born in Greenwich Village in New York City in 1886. He studied at the Art Students League and the New York School of Art before settling in Paris in 1909, where he studied sculpture with Henri Matisse. He was aware of the avant-garde movements Cubism, Orphism, and Futurism. Turning his attention from sculpture to painting, he developed a style based on the rhythmic use of color, analogous to symphonic musical composition, which he termed Synchromism. Like his contemporaries Frank Kupka and Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Russell was interested in color theory.

Russell exhibited his Synchromist paintings, along with those of another young American, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, first in Europe and then in New York in 1914 and 1916. Although Russell was discouraged by financial difficulties and abandoned his Synchromist style by 1930, his work had suggested to his American contemporaries the possibilities of a new style of abstract painting that emphasized color. He returned to America in 1946 and died in Broomall, Pennsylvania in 1953.

References:

http://wwar.com/masters/movements/synchromism.html

http://www.moma.org/learn/resources/archives/EAD/Russellf