(1890-1976)
Mark Tobey was an American painter greatly influenced by Asian philosophies and calligraphy. He developed a unique visual language consisting of a whirling mass of calligraphic marks. A pioneer of all-over painting, Tobey had a profound impact on Jackson Pollock’s work.
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Mark Tobey’s discovery of Eastern philosophies and calligraphy
Mark Tobey was born in Centerville, Wisconsin, on 11 December 1890. The Tobey family moved to Chicago in 1893. Mark Tobey studied at the Chicago Art Institute from 1906 to 1908. In 1911, Tobey then moved to New York, where he worked for a time as a portrait painter and fashion designer.
The Knoedler Gallery in New York presented Tobey’s first exhibition in 1917. The following year, the artist converted to the Baháʼí faith, an Abrahamic and monotheistic religion teaching the spiritual unity of humanity. Tobey’s spirituality was inextricably linked to his artistic practice. Writing about Tobey, the painter William Chapin Seitz explained: “Like Kandinsky, Klee, and Mondrian, Tobey sees the highest reality as spiritual rather than physical.”
Tobey began teaching at the Cornish School in Seattle, Washington, in 1922. It was around that time that he met the Chinese student Teng Kuei, who taught him calligraphy. The meeting between the two marked a crucial juncture in Tobey’s development as an artist. The exhibition Paintings, Watercolours and Drawings by Mark Tobey was presented at the Arts Club of Chicago in 1928, followed by a second exhibition at Romany Marie’s Café Gallery in New York in the same year.
The American art historian Alfred Hamilton Barr Jr.—also the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York—then invited Tobey to participate in the exhibition Painting and Sculpture by Living Americans, which was presented to the public in 1930. The Contemporary Arts Gallery in New York and the Harry Hartman Gallery in Seattle both organised exhibitions for the artist in 1931. Between 1931 and 1937, Tobey was artist-in-residence at Dartington Hall in Devon, United Kingdom, where he met the artists Pearl S. Buck, Aldous Huxley, Bernard Leach, Rabindranath Tagore and Rudi Shankar who, like him, had been strongly influenced by Eastern philosophies.
In 1934, Tobey travelled to Europe and Asia. Spending a month at a monastery near Kyoto, in Japan, Tobey studied Zen painting, meditated and studied calligraphy. It was there that Tobey found the “defining calligraphic impulse” that would lead him to what he termed his “white writing”: layers of white paint superimposed over calligraphic writings. This artistic development made Tobey a pioneer of what would become known as all-over painting.
Tobey’s first institutional solo exhibition was presented at the Seattle Art Museum in 1934. His works were also exhibited at the Fine Arts Gallery in London and the Paul Elder Gallery in San Francisco.
The emergence of Mark Tobey’s white writing
Returning to Dartington Hall in 1935, Tobey painted the works Broadway and Welcome Hero, in which he used “white writing” for the first time. Broadway was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1941 at the Artists for Victory exhibition.
In 1944, Tobey’s work was exhibited for the first time by the Willard Gallery in New York, which would go on to present his work on a regular basis. This was the breakthrough moment for Tobey, who won national recognition during this period. Between 1945 and 1946, four major solo exhibitions of Tobey’s work were held at the Portland Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Arts Club of Chicago and the Detroit Institute of Arts’ Alger House. In 1948, Tobey took part in the Venice Biennale for the first time. He was represented at the Biennale again in 1956, 1958—when he won the International Grand Prize for Painting—and 1964.
A succession of gallery exhibitions followed, as well as a number of solo exhibitions in American museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Tobey took part in the São Paulo Biennale for the first time in 1951 and was presented there again in 1955.
In 1954, Tobey began work on his Meditative series. The Otto Seligman Gallery in Seattle represented Tobey’s works on the West Coast, under contract with the artist.
The painter Mark Tobey’s international recognition
Mark Tobey went on to win recognition in Europe, where art exhibitions dedicated to his work were held on a regular basis from 1955 onwards. His first European exhibition was presented by the Galerie Jeanne Bucher in Paris. A retrospective of Tobey’s work was also organised at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.
In 1956, Tobey took part in the American Painting exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London, exhibiting alongside Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still. In the same year, Tobey became a permanent member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in the United States. Tobey also began work on his Above the Earth series at around this time. He received the Guggenheim International Award and the American Institute of Architects’ Fine Arts Medal the following year. Tobey painted his Sumi ink works in 1957.
In 1958, Tobey took part in the exhibition 50 ans d’art moderne in Brussels. A touring retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work travelled between the Seattle Art Museum, the Portland Art Museum, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, the Pasadena Art Museum and the M. H. De Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco during the period from 1959 to 1960. Tobey was also featured at Documenta II in Kassel in 1959 and then at Documenta III in 1964.
In 1960, Tobey was selected to become a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, but he refused the nomination, moving to Switzerland in the same year, where he settled in Basel. A retrospective exhibition of Tobey’s work was organised at the Kunsthalle Mannheim in Mannheim, Germany. The following year, Tobey was awarded first prize at the International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. He also had his first exhibition at the Galerie Beyeler in Basel, where he was subsequently exhibited on a regular basis. A retrospective exhibition of Tobey’s work was presented at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1961, then at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Phillips Collection in Washington, the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.
In 1966, a touring retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work travelled to the Stedeljik Museum in Amsterdam, the Kunsthalle in Bern, the Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hanover and the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Düsseldorf.
Tobey was made a Commander of the French Order of Arts and Letters in Paris in 1968 and went on to receive the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Award in 1970. On Tobey’s 80th birthday, the artist was honoured with retrospective exhibitions at the Seattle Art Museum and the Galerie Beyeler in Basel.
The painter Mark Tobey died on 24 April 1976 in Basel. Numerous exhibitions were organised in tributes to his life, including Mark Tobey 1890 – 1976 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Writing about Tobey, the art critic Michel Ragon noted: “His art, though unassuming, is nonetheless a continual dialogue with the spirit. There are the Tablets of the Law whose indecipherable writing often moves us like messages from another world.”
© Diane de Polignac Gallery
Translation: Lucy Johnston
Selected collections
Selected collections
Basel, Kunstmuseum
Basel, Fondation Beyeler
Baltimore, MD, The Baltimore Museum of Art
Bremen, Kunsthalle
Brussels, Musée des Beaux-Arts
Buffalo, NY, Albright-Knox Art Gallery
Caen, Musée des Beaux-Arts
Chicago, IL, Art Institute
Cleveland, OH, Cleveland Museum of Art
Dallas, TX, Dallas Museum of Art
Davenport, IA, Figge Art Museum
Detroit, MI, The Detroit Institute of Arts
Devon, Dartington Hall Trust
Düsseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen
Essen, Museum Folkwang
Greensburg, PA, Westmoreland Museum of American Art
Houston, TX, Museum of Fine Arts
Houston, TX, The Menil Collection
Indianapolis, IN, Indianapolis Museum of Art
Lakeland, FL, Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland
Lisbon, Museu Berardo
London, Tate Modern
Los Angeles, CA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles, CA, Museum of Contemporary Art
Madrid, Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Madrid, Museo de Arte Thyssen-Bornemisza
Mönchengladbach (Germany), Museum Abteiberg
New York, NY, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, NY, The Museum of Modern Art
New York, NY, Whitney Museum of American Art
New York, NY, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
Palm Beach, FL, Norton Museum of Art
Paris, Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Georges Pompidou
Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris
Philadelphia, PA, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Portland, OR, Portland Art Museum
Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art
Rome, National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art
Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen
San Francisco, CA, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Seattle, WA, Seattle Art Museum
Seattle, WA, Frye Art Museum
Saint Louis, MI, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
Stockholm, Moderna Museet
Tehran, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art
Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Vienna, MUMOK
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art
Washington, D.C., National Museum of American Art
Washington, D.C., Smithsonian American Art Museum
Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution
Washington, D.C., The Phillips Collection, Washington
Wilmington, NC, Delaware Art Museum
Winterthur, Kunstmuseum
Zurich, Kunsthaus
Selected exhibitions
Selected exhibitions
M. Knoedler & Co, Inc., New York, 1917, 1960, 1976
The Arts Club, Chicago, 1928, 1940
Paintings and Drawings by Mark Tobey, Romany Marie’s Café Gallery, New York, 1928
Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1921, 1930, 1942, 1943, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1950, 1951, 1953, 1955, 1960, 1970, 1976, 1978, 1990, 2007, 2013
Drawings and Watercolours by Mark Tobey, Harry Hartman Bookstore and Gallery, Seattle, 1931
Seattle Art Museum, 1934, 1940, 1942, 1945, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1963, 1968, 1970, 1978, 1998, 2002, 2006, 2014
Paintings and Drawings by Mark Tobey, Beaux Arts Gallery, London, 1934
Art Institute, Chicago, 1940, 1946, 1948, 1951, 1954, 1955, 1959, 1961
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1942, 1944, 1950, 1993
Willard Gallery, New York, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1953, 1954, 1957, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974
Annual group exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, from 1945 to 1967; 1971, 1977, 1990, 2012
Touring solo exhibition, Portland Art Museum; San Francisco Museum of Art; The Arts Club of Chicago; Alger House, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1945–1946
Brooklyn Museum, New York, 1945, 1951
Tate Gallery, London, 1946, 1956, 1964
Samuel Kootz Gallery, New York, 1948, 1949, 1950
Venice Biennale, 1948, 1956, 1958, 1964
Margaret Brown Gallery, Boston, 1949, 1951, 1954, 1956
Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, 1950, 1951, 1954, 1967
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1950, 1956, 1960
Mark Tobey Retrospective, touring solo exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco; the University of Washington; the Henry Gallery, Seattle and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1951
São Paulo Biennale, 1951, 1955
Otto Seligman Gallery, Seattle, 1954, 1957, 1962, 1965
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, 1955
Galerie Stadler, Paris, 1955, 1956, 1958
Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Paris, 1955, 1960, 1965, 1968, 2006, 2007, 2016, 2018
Retrospective, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1955, 1995
Cinquante ans d’art aux États-Unis, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, 1955
Peintres contemporains américains, Musée Galliera, Paris, 1957
50 ans d’Art Moderne, touring exhibition, Brussels, 1958
Orient – Occident. Rencontres et Influences durant 50 siècles d’Art, Cernuschi Museum, Paris, 1958
Mark Tobey. A Retrospective exhibition from Northwest Collections, Seattle Art Museum; Portland Art Museum; Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center; Pasadena Art Museum; M. H. De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, 1959–1960
Documenta II, Kassel, 1959, Documenta III, 1964
Tobey Retrospektive, Kunsthalle Mannheim, Mannheim 1960–1961
Art Contemporain, Galerie Nationale du Grand Palais, Paris, 1963
International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 1961
Galerie Beyeler, Basel, 1961, 1963, 1966, 1967, 1970, 1972, 1973, 1976, 1980, 1989, 1990, 1993, 2002
Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Palais du Louvre, Paris, 1960, 1961
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1961, 1964, 1976, 2009
Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Phillips Collection, Washington, 1962
Mark Tobey. Retrospective: Paintings and Drawings 1925-1961, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 1962
Retrospective, Cleveland Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, 1962
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Gothenburg (Sweden), 1962
National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1963, 1973, 1984
Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, 1964, 1965, 1967, 1970
Galerie Alice Pauli, Lausanne, 1965, 1971, 1990, 2005
Mark Tobey: Works 1933-1966, Stedeljik Museum, Amsterdam; Kunsthalle, Bern; Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover; Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, 1966
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, 1966, 1968, 1973
U.S.A. Art Vivant, Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, 1966
Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, 1967, 1972, 1973
Retrospective, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, 1968
Works of Art of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Collected by Louise and Joseph Pulitzer Jr., City Art Museum, St. Louis, 1968
Betty Parsons’ Private Collection, Finch College Museum of Art, New York, 1968
L’Espace lyrique – L’action painting, l’abstraction lyrique et leurs environs : le signe, la tâche, le nuage … des années cinquante à nos jours, Centre d’Art Contemporain de l’Abbaye de Beaulieu, Ginals-Lexos (France), 1973
Tribute to Mark Tobey, Smithsonian Institution, National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington; Seattle Art Museum; City Art Museum, St. Louis, 1974–1975
Tobey. Rückblick auf harmonische Weltbilder, Retrospective, Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, 1975
Paris – New York, 1908-1968, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1977
Mark Tobey. Graphics, Museum of Art, Indianapolis, 1979
The Contemporary Art Gallery, Seibu, Tokyo, 1985
Cinquante ans de dessins américains 1930 – 1980, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1985
Mark Tobey. Between worlds. Opere 1935-1975, Retrospective, Museo d’Arte, Mendrisio (Switzerland) and the Museum Folkwang, Essen, 1989
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1989, 1997
Mark Tobey. Works on Paper from Northern California and Seattle Collections. Celebrating the centenary of the artist’s birth, Stanford University Museum of Art, Stanford Art Gallery, 1990
Jahrgang 1890. Mark Tobey, Kunstmuseum, Basel, 1990
Die großen Sammlungen – The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Von Cézanne bis Pollock, Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, 1992
Les Nymphéas avant et après, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, 1992
Fundação Arpad Szenes – Vieira da Silva, Lisbon, 1995
The Exhibition of Swiss Private Collections, Hokkaido Museum of Art, Sapporo; Huis ten Bosch Museum of Art and Municipal Museum of Art, Kyoto; Mitsukoshi Museum of Art, Tokyo, 1995
Kurt Lidtke Galleries, Seattle, 1998, 1999, 2000
Die Nähe des Entfernten – Mark Tobey, curated by H. Hachmeister, Linden-Museum, Stuttgart, 1999
Achim Moeller Fine Art, Berlin, 2000, 2011, 2013
Master drawings from the Smith College Museum of Art, The Frick Collection, New York, 2001
National Museum of Art Osaka, Osaka, 2001, 2006
Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles, 2003, 2016
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 2009, 2017
Fondation de l’Hermitage, Lausanne, 2009, 2013
Monet and Abstraction, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Marmottan Monet Museum, Paris, 2010
Contemporary Art and Calligraphy – At the Nexus of Painting and Writing, Seoul Calligraphy Museum, Seoul Arts Center, 2013
Approaching Infinity, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento (CA), 2013
In progress, Works from the MUMOK collection, MUMOK Vienna, 2013
Contemplating East Asia: Mark Tobey and Sam Francis, Ackland Art Museum (NC), 2014
American painters in Paris, Diane de Polignac Gallery, Paris, 2015
Abstract Expressionism, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2016
Nymphéas. L’abstraction américaine et le dernier Monet, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, 2018
Selected bibliography
Selected bibliography
Portraits by Mark Tobey, M. Knoedler & Co. Gallery, New York, 1917
Paintings by Mark Tobey, Portland Art Museum/San Francisco Museum of Art/Detroit Institute of Arts, 1945/1946
Fourteen Americans, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1946
Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1951
Mark Tobey Retrospective, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1951
Mark Tobey. Retrospective Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1951
Christian Zervos, Mark Tobey, in Cahiers d’Art 29/2, Paris, 1954
Mark Tobey, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1955
Contemporary Calligraphers – John Marin, Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, 1956
Pierre Restany, Tobey, in Cimaise. Art et architecture actuels 5/4, Paris, 1958
Courtois, M., Mark Tobey. Des Pictogrammes indiens à l’écriture blanche, in Cahiers du Musée de Poche, Paris, 1959
Roberts, C., Mark Tobey, Le Musée de Poche collection, Georges Fall, Paris, 1959
Mark Tobey. A Retrospective exhibition from Northwest Collections, Seattle Art Museum, 1959
Roberts, C., Drawings by Mark Tobey, Grove Press Inc., New York, 1960
Choay, F., Mark Tobey, Peintres d’aujourd’hui collection, Fernand Hazan, Paris, 1961
Mark Tobey. Retrospective, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Palais du Louvre, Paris, 1961
Tobey, Konstsalongen Samlaren, Stockholm/Göteborgs Konstmuseum 1962/63
American Drawings, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1964
Mark Tobey, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1966
Mark Tobey. Werke 1933-1966, Kunsthalle Bern, 1966
Mark Tobey, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, 1966
Mark Tobey, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover, 1966
Mark Tobey Retrospective, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, 1968
Tobey’s 80. A Retrospective, Seattle Art Museum, 1970/71
Muller, W.K., Prints and Multiples, in Arts 46, December 1971
Mark Tobey. Prints, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1971
Mark Tobey. A Decade of Printmaking, The Cincinnati Art Museum, 1972
Tribute to Mark Tobey, Smithsonian Institution, National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington/Seattle Art Museum/City Art Museum, St. Louis, 1974/1975
Mark Tobey. Rückblick auf harmonische Weltbilder, Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, 1975
Paris – New York, 1908-1968, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1977
Mark Tobey. Graphics, Museum of Art, Indianapolis, 1979
Yao, M.-C., The Influence of Chinese and Japanese Calligraphy on Mark Tobey (1890-1976), San Francisco, 1983
Kelly, Edward Rulief, Mark Tobey and the Bahá’í Faith: New Perspectives on the Artist and His Paintings, PhD diss., The University of Texas at Austin, 1983
Mark Tobey. Between worlds. Opere 1935-1975, edited by M. Bärmann, Museo d’Arte, Mendrisio/Museum Folkwang, Essen, 1989
Mark Tobey. Works on Paper from Northern California and Seattle Collections. Celebrating the centenary of the artist’s birth, Stanford University Museum of Art, Stanford Art Gallery, 1990
Feininger and Tobey. Years of Friendship 1944-1956. The Complete Correspondence, Achim Moeller Fine Art, New York, 1991
Mark Tobey, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, edited by K. de Barañano/M. Bärmann, Madrid, 1997
McDonald, R., Histories of the Transcendental in Art. Romanticism, Zen and Mark Tobey, Canterbury (Thesis), 1999
Nymphéas. L’abstraction américaine et le dernier Monet, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, 2018
Mark Tobey Faq
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