Mark Tobey Mark Tobey was born on December 11, 1890 in Centerville, Wisconsin. As a child, his family often moved, but eventually settled near Chicago when Tobey was a teenager. During this time, Tobey attended two years of weekend classes at the Art Institute of Chicago, but needed to abandon his studies when his father fell ill. Tobey therefore found employment as a fashion illustrator for McCalls magazine, drawing portraits of models. During this time, Tobey became fascinated by the use of line to clearly depict and/or diffuse an image. This interest in line would last through out his life. In 1917, Tobey was given an exhibition of his fashion portraits at M. Knoedler & Co in New York. While in New York, Tobey was introduced to the Baha’I World Faith. This highly affected Tobey, as his art would later reflect spiritual and religious influences. Tobey was then invited to teach at the Cornish School of Allied Arts, and moved to Seattle in 1922. In Seattle, he met a Chinese student who introduced him to Chinese Caligraphy. This, in combination with his already strong interest in Baha’I, formed a desire in Tobey to travel to the east. Four years later, Tobey traveled to the Middle East, and became acquainted with Persian and Arabic script. Studying these forms of writing and calligraphy would further influence his signature painting style. In 1931, he became a resident artist at Darlington Hall in Devonshire, England, but regularly left the school for periods of travel. This behavior was very common for Tobey, as he tended to prefer individual exploration and discovery to rigid academia. One special excursion was his one-month stay at a Zen monestary outside of Kyoto in 1934. Tobey’s exhibition career had a rather late start. Perhaps this was due to his ambivalence towards fame and notoriety, preferring to create his art at his own pace, without adhering to artistic trends of the time. Nevertheless, Tobey eventually achieved attention for his sublime, abstract style. His famous “white writings” commenced with Broadway Norm (1935), and were shown for the first time at the Willard Gallery in New York. Following this, in the forties, Tobey garnered more attention, showing his work at the Arts Club of Chicago and the Portland Museum of Art in Oregon. Galerie Jeanne Bucher gave Tobey his first show in France in 1955, which resulted in a large audience and high critical acclaim in Europe. This led to Tobey’s achievement as the first American painter to be given as a solo show at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1961. He was also honored with solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1962, and a retrospective at the National Collection of Fine Arts in Washington, DC in 1974. Tobey died in Basel on April 24, 1976. He had been living there for the previous sixteen years. Edited by R.S. «back