Mark Tobey

ART FORUM UTE BARTH
Gallery for Modern & Contemporary Art, Zurich

1890 in Centerville, Wisconsin/USA, geboren
1976 in Basel gestorben

english

Mark Tobey wurde am 11. Dezember 1890 in Wisconsin geboren. Sein Werk zeigt deutliche Einfluesse der ostasiatischen Kunst.
1906 bis 1908 belegte er Kurse am Art Institute of Chicago. 1911 zog er nach New York und arbeitete als Illustrator bei einer Zeitschrift. 1917 hatte Tobey seine erste Einzelausstellung bei Knoedler & Co, in New York. In den zwanziger Jahren, er war inzwischen nach Seattle gezogen und arbeitete als Lehrer an der Corbish Scholl of Allied Arts, begann er die chinesische Kalligraphie zu entdecken. 1925 ging Tobey nach Paris, 1926 in den Mittleren Osten, er interessierte sich fuer Persische und Arabische Schriften.

Als er 1928 nach Seattle zurueckkehrte wurde er Mitbegruender der Free and Creative Art School. 1931 bis 1938 lebte er in England, unternahm aber auch zahlreiche Reisen nach Mexiko, Amerika und den Orient. Unter anderem blieb er 1934 einen Monat lang in einem Zen-Kloster in der Naehe von Kyoto. 1935 begann er mit seinen "White Writing Paintings", die 1944 in der Willard Gallery, New York gezeigt wurden. 1938 kehrte Tobey nach Seattle zurueck, malte, arbeitete als Lehrer und befasste sich mit Musik-Theorien. Einige wichtige amerikanische Museen stellten sein Werk aus und 1951 lud ihn Josef Albers an die Yale Universitaet ein, wo er 3 Monate blieb. 1955 brachte ihn Jeanne Bucher zum ersten Mal nach Paris. In den naechsten Jahren erhielt er renommierte Preise und hatte Einzelausstellungen im Museum of Modern Art, New York (1962 und im Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1966). 1974 fand eine grosse Retrospektive in der National Collection of Fine Arts in Washington statt.
Am 24. April 1976 starb Tobey in Basel.

Biography

Mark Tobey was born on December 11, 1890, in Centerville, Wisconsin. From 1906 to 1908 he attended Saturday classes at The Art Institute of Chicago. In 1911 Tobey moved to New York, where he worked as a fashion illustrator for McCall’s magazine. His first one-man show was held at M. Knoedler & Co., New York, in 1917.

In 1918 Tobey converted to the Baha’i World Faith, which led him to explore the representation of the spiritual in art. Four years later he moved to Seattle and began teaching at the Cornish School of Allied Arts. Also that year he began to explore Chinese calligraphy. The artist went to Paris in 1925, beginning his lifelong travels. While in the Middle East in 1926, he became interested in Persian and Arabic script. Upon returning to Seattle in 1928, Tobey cofounded the Free and Creative Art School. From 1931 to 1938 he was resident artist at Dartington Hall, a progressive school in Devonshire, England. His tenure there was punctuated with frequent absences for travel to Mexico, the United States, and the Orient. Tobey spent a month in a Zen monastery outside Kyoto in 1934; the following year he began his “white writing” paintings, which were shown for the first time at the Willard Gallery, New York, in 1944. Tobey exhibited regularly at the Willard Gallery thereafter.

Tobey returned in 1938 to Seattle where, in addition to painting and teaching, he studied the piano and music theory. During this period he executed several paintings inspired by Seattle’s open-air market. The Arts Club of Chicago held solo shows of Tobey’s work in 1940 and 1946. He was given a solo exhibition in 1945 at the Portland Museum of Art, Oregon. In 1951, at the invitation of Josef Albers , Tobey spent three months as guest critic of graduate art-students’ work at Yale University. Also that year the artist’s first retrospective was held at the palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. A solo show of Tobey’s work took place in 1955 at the Galerie Jeanne Bucher in Paris. The next year he was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and he received a Guggenheim International Award. In 1957 he began his Sumi ink paintings. Tobey was awarded the City of Venice painting prize at the Venice Biennale the following year. The artist settled in Basel in 1960, and in 1961 he became the first American painter to be honored with a solo exhibition at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. Solo presentations of Tobey’s work were held at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1962, and at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1966. A major retrospective of the artist’s work took place at the National Collection of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C., in 1974. Tobey died in Basel on April 24, 1976.

ART FORUM UTE BARTH
Galerie für Moderne & Zeitgenössische Kunst
Kartausstrasse 8 CH-8008 Zuerich
Tel. +41 44 3802711
www.artforumutebarth.com Email