A painter and muralist and leader of the Synchromist movement, Stanton MacDonald-Wright had a lengthy career of painting that alternated between abstraction and figurative and expressive of his interest in relationships between color and form and Oriental art.

He was born in Charlottesville, Virginia. In 1901, he ran away from home on a windjammer to Los Angeles and studied there at the Art Students League and with Joseph Greenbaum.