(Seated Model sideview)

Stanton Macdonald-Wright

Stanton MacDonald Wright was born and educated in New York and grew up in Santa Monica, CA. His first name, Stanton, was chosen to honor the women's rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton; he later hyphenated his last name after repeatedly being asked if he were related to the famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

After co-founding the Synchromism movement in Paris in 1912 his career found new footing once he moved to Los Angeles in the early 1920s and immersed himself in the Modernist scene of the West Coast. He became involved in gallery and museum curation as well as theater, constantly working to promote the work of Southern California artists who led the way toward new Modernist sensibilities.

In this ink drawing of a seated woman, he pares down his inclination toward complex color and form to capture a solitary moment with nothing but a pen nib and India ink. It appears as though the model is sewing or perhaps turning the pages of a book. She might be seated in a patch of sunlight; she’s casual, comfortable, and unaware of her current position as muse to an attentive artist. In such sure-handed series of brief pen-strokes, the prolific, consummate working artist has taken a moment of quietude to distill his aesthetic into a concentrated visual poem.