MORGAN RUSSELL Self Portrait, at the Easel. Oil on canvas, circa 1920-30. 730x545...

MORGAN RUSSELL
Self Portrait, at the Easel.

Oil on canvas, circa 1920-30. 730x545 mm; 29x21 1/4 inches. Signed in oil, upper left recto.

Ex-collection the artist Alexander Robinson (1867-1940), Paris; private collection, Paris.

Russell (1886-1953) trained in New York and Europe, sponsored by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, which stoked his interest in the Post-Impressionists and the Fauves. In 1912, this led him to establish, along with friend and fellow artist Stanton MacDonald-Wright (see lot 158) the Synchronism movement, which was the creation of abstract paintings that analogized color to music. Though Synchronism caused a stir in the avant-garde scene, as the first major modernist movement advanced by American artists, it lost its momentum when Russell and MacDonald-Wright went their separate ways in 1920. Russell's later work is largely figurative and displays few of the color effects and the abstraction of Synchronism.