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  3. Mark Tobey

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    Biography of Mark Tobey

    Mark Tobey is born 1890 in Centerville (Wisconsin, USA). In 1893 his family moves to Chicago; after having attended the Art Institute (1906-1908), he settles down in New York in 1911, he works there as a portraitist and fashion designer. His first exhibition is organized in 1917 at the Knoedler Gallery. The young man is converted to the Baha'i religion in 1918. The artist moves to Seattle in 1922 and the following year, meets Teng Kuei (Chinese painter and student) who introduces him to calligraphy. Mark Tobey travels for two years in Europe, goes to Beirut and Haifa, where he focuses on Arabic and Persian scripts. Back to Seattle (1927), the artist participates in the creation of the Free and Creative Art School (1928). The following year, his works are exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Tobey settles for several years in Devonshire, travels, stays in China, and Japan (Zen monastery in Kyoto). Back to England (1935), He paints several paintings in a "white writing" that would be the essential characteristic of his work and which critics say have a decisive influence on the route of Jackson Pollock. In 1939, Mark Tobey returns to Seattle, studies piano and music theories, develops his calligraphic experience in 1942, exhibits in New York in 1944 and 1951 in Paris (Jeanne Bucher Gallery) in 1955. He receives in 1956 the Guggenheim International Award, in 1958 he presents a retrospective exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum and win the Grand Prize for painting at the Venice Biennale. A new retrospective is being held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1962. Eager to discover and explore, he is always traveling. Numerous exhibitions and prestigious awards honor him until his disappearance. The artist dies in Basel in 1976, the city where he settles down in 1960.

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Catalogue(s) raisonné(s)

Catalogue(s) raisonné(s)
Not realised. All the catalogues raisonnés

Bibliographic track & more

To read from or about the artist :
* « Tobey », Colette Roberts, coll. Le musée de Poche, Ed. G. Fall, Paris, 1959
* « Mark Tobey », Françoise Choay, Ed. Hazan, Paris, 1961
* « Mark Tobey », Jean Revol, in La Nouvelle Revue française, n°108, déc. 1961
* « Mark Tobey », François Mathey, Julien Alvard, catalogue d'exposition, Musée des arts décoratifs, Paris, 1961
* « Les Monotypes de Tobey », Michelson, catalogue d'exposition, Ed. Galerie Jeanne-Bucher, Paris, 1965
* « Mark Tobey », Jean-François Jaeger, catalogue d'exposition, Ed. Galerie Jeanne-Bucher, Paris, 1968
* « Mark Tobey - Between worlds », Michele Reiner, Matthias Bärmann et autres, catalogue d'expositions, Museo d'arte Mendrisio (Suisse) et Museum Folkwang, Essen (Allemagne), 1989
* « Mark Tobey: Werke/Oeuvres 1945-1975 ». Castor Seibel, Heiner Hachmeister, catalogue d'exposition, Hachmeister Verlag, Muenster, 1991
* « Mark Tobey: Light - Space », Wesley Wehr, Matthias Bärmann et autres, Hachmeister Verlag, Muenster, 2004

Website :
http://www.cmt-marktobey.net/
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+ A tribute to...

A tribute to Mark Tobey

Sorry this section is only available in french for now.

On le surnommait « le vieux maître de la jeune peinture américaine ». Dès 1935, ayant étudié à la fois la calligraphie chinoise et la peinture zen, il avait développé une peinture méditative constituée d'un fourmillement de signes. Le peintre abstrait Mark Tobey est mort le 24 avril 1976 à Bâle en Suisse, où il s’était établi en 1960 ; il avait 85 ans. L’artiste repose à Riehen, près de Bâle, au cimetière de Hörnli. En son hommage, avec nos pensées les plus respectueuses, cette fleur de lys.

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"La science et la religion sont les deux grandes puissances qui doivent être équilibrées pour la maturité de l’Homme." - Mark Tobey

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"Son art, bien que sans prétention, n’en est pas moins un dialogue permanent avec l’esprit. Ce sont les Tables de la Loi dont l’écriture indéchiffrable nous émeut comme des messages émis d’un autre monde." - Michel Ragon

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"Comme Kandinsky, Klee et Mondrian, Tobey voit la plus haute réalité des choses comme spirituelle plutôt que physique." - William Chapin Seitz

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"Un tableau doit être comme un tissu, une texture. C’en est assez ! J’ai peut-être été influencé par ma mère. Elle cousait sans arrêt." - Mark Tobey

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"Sur les trottoirs et sur l'écorce des arbres, j'ai trouvé des mondes entiers." - Mark Tobey

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"Je crois que la peinture doit passer par les voies de la méditation plutôt que par les canaux de l'action." - Mark Tobey

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Art movements

  • + ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM / 1942-1957 / Archile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Clifford Still, Adolph Gottlieb, Franz Kline, Ad Reinhardt, Philip Guston, Kenneth Noland, etc.
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See & discover

Beyond works currently in stock, it seemed to me useful to combine business with pleasure by letting you discover others works by artists in my gallery. These artworks, now sold or removed from our website, have been in our stock in the past.

These pages will undoubtedly make it possible for some of you to associate an image with its title or the other way round, for others it will be a good time to discover more on such and such artist. For the sake of confidentiality – the pieces being no longer available – we won't display neither their numbering or their price. For whatever reason, make sure to visit this amazing art database with to date 6441 online works just for your pleasure! Michelle Champetier



Artists on display

The art and the artists display: proclamations, galleries, museums, personal or collective exhibitions. On walls or in shop windows, wise or rebels, posters warn, argue, show. Some were specially conceived by an artist for such or such event, other, colder, have only the letter.

Some were created in lithographic technic, most are simple offset reproductions. They are many those who like collecting these rectangles of paper, monochrome or in games of colours, in matt paper or brilliant, with many words or almost dumb.

We are happy also to be able to greet, by this pages, mythical galleries as those of Denise René, Louis Carré, Claude Bernard, Berheim Jeune, Maeght, Pierre Loeb and others.

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