Au Café (Synchromy)

Artist Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1890 - 1973)

Date1918

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions50 x 28 in. (127 x 71.1 cm)
Framed: 58 5/16 in. × 36 1/4 in. × 3 in.

ClassificationsPainting

Credit LinePromised Gift to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas

On View

On view

Label TextAu Café (Synchromy) first appears to be a purely abstract painting. Upon closer inspection, however, two figures emerge. In the upper half of the composition, a woman wearing a hat raises a glass toward her lips; a man sits below, his profile a sequence of overlapping color wedges.

Stanton Macdonald-Wright co-founded the art movement “Synchromism” in 1912. Synchromist paintings were based on color “scales” that were similar to musical scales. Macdonald-Wright arranged his brilliant, jewel-like pigments in staggered blocks and prismatic shapes, as if to mimic sequences of musical chords.

Au Café (Sincromía) parece ser, en principio, una pintura puramente abstracta. Sin embargo, al observarla más de cerca, emergen dos figuras: en la mitad superior de la composición, una mujer con sombrero que se lleva una copa a los labios; debajo, un hombre sentado cuyo perfil es una secuencia de cuñas de color superpuestas.

Stanton Macdonald-Wright fue cofundador del movimiento artístico denominado “sincromismo” en 1912. Las pinturas sincromistas se basaban en “escalas” cromáticas semejantes a las escalas musicales. Macdonald-Wright dispuso sus pigmentos brillantes cual joyas en bloques escalonados y formas prismáticas, como si quisiera imitar las secuencias de cuerdas musicales.