Russell, Morgan, 1886-1953

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.

In 1976 The Museum of Modern Art organized an exhibition of paintings, notebooks, and sketches entitled "Morgan Russell: Synchromist Studies 1910-1922" [MoMA Exh.# 1121, March 16 - May 25, 1976]. The exhibition was directed by Cora Rosevar, Assistant Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture. Gail Levin Theodore, Assistant Professor of Art History, Connecticut College, collaborated on the exhibition, making available her independent research on Morgan Russell.

Painter, sculptor, co-founder of synchromism, born in New York, N.Y.

Morgan Russell abandoned the study of architecture after his first trip to Paris in 1906. Returning to his native New York, he studied sculpture with James Earle Fraser and anatomy and drawing with George B. Bridgman at the Art Students League. Shortly after, he studied painting with Robert Henri at the New York School of Art; he did his first painting in 1907. During a second trip to Paris in 1908, Russell met Gertrude and Leo Stein and their circle, including Guillaume Apollinaire, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Auguste Rodin. He settled in Paris in the spring of 1909 and did not return to the United States to live for almost four decades. He studied painting with Matisse (c. 1909-10), and received a monthly stipend from his friend Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney through the end of 1915. Russell studied work he saw in museums, and was particularly influenced by Michaelangelo's Dying Slave, which he saw at the Musee du Louvre. In 1911, Russell met Stanton Macdonald-Wright while attending Ernest Percyval Tudor-Hart's classes in color theory. Russell and Macdonald-Wright formed a close friendship, and together developed a painting style called "Synchromism," meaning "with color"; their synchromies were exhibited for the first time in 1913. Russell also became interested in color and light, and began experimenting with a light machine. In 1918, he married Emilie Francesconi; in 1921, they bought a farm southeast of Paris in Aigremont, where Russell would live until leaving France. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Russell returned to more figurative work, often using himself as a model; he visited California in the early 1930s. He married Suzanne Binon in 1946, eight years after his first wife died of cancer. In 1946, the Russells left France for good, going to live with Suzanne's daughter Denyse (Mrs. A. Atwater Kent) in Ardmore, PA. Russell suffered a paralytic stroke in 1948, which affected his ability to paint. He died in a nursing home in Bromwell, Pa., in 1953.

American painter and theorist.

Russell was one of the founders of Synchromism.

Morgan Russell (1886-1953) was a painter and sculptor from New York, N.Y.

Russell studied at the Art Students League with James Earle Fraser, Robert Henri, and Andrew Dasburg from 1906-1907, and in Paris in 1908. After meeting Stanton Macdonald-Wright in 1911, he became interested in Synchromism and studied with Canadian color theorist Ernest Tudor-Hart. In 1913 Russell produced the first abstract Synchromies and in 1917 developed a series of Synchromies entitled EIDOS.