The Husband & your host lived in Seattle for 20 years (1981-2001), where Mark Tobey was rather the patron saint of Pacific Northwest painting. The Seattle Art Museum has a large selection of his work & his paintings are ubiquitous in important Seattle Microsoft executives’ collections.
A painter of small abstract works with underlying religious themes as well as illustrator & muralist, Mark Tobey remains known primarily for his "white writing" paintings that give the impression of being expansive and much larger than they actually are.
Finding the Bahai World faith in 1918 & later Zen Buddhism was essential to Tobey's life & work, with themes of oneness & progression. His commitment to spiritual expression in painting, gave Tobey a renowned reputation as a modernist but h moree appreciated in Europe & Asia than in the USA.
Tobey:"There have been 32 isms since the advent of cubism, we have just been confused by the storm. . . we forget that there are today great men in the religious field with as much to offer. . . religion like science must be balanced to bring men to a state of equilibrium & that and that only will bring peace."
Tobey was mid-west born & raised. In Chicago he briefly attended the Art Institute School. He worked as a commercial illustrator, & from 1911 to 1922, he lived & worked in NYC where he did fashion illustration for McCalls magazine & other publications.
Between 1923 & 1960, he lived in Seattle & Paris. In Seattle, where he worked closely with artists in the city’s large Asian community, he studied Chinese brush-work.
Living in Seattle, he developed his signature technique of "white writing", linked to Asian calligraphy. His paintings reflect substance but not solidity, suggesting space with non-space & strokes of spirituality of the cosmos.
He was the first painter of the Pacific Northwest School to achieve international fame. Personally, he was an irritable, irascible man with many difficult relationships & only a few close friends.
A man of his time, he was not fully out of the closet, but his homosexuality was an open secret. In 1960 Tobey moved to Basel, Switzerland with his partner of 20 years, artist- Pehr Hallsten & his secretary- Mark Ritter. Tobey continued to live with Ritter, after Hallsten's death in 1966, He served as Chairman of the Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Basel for 16 years until his death in 1976. Tobey would have been 121 years old today.
Self Portrait 1920
A painter of small abstract works with underlying religious themes as well as illustrator & muralist, Mark Tobey remains known primarily for his "white writing" paintings that give the impression of being expansive and much larger than they actually are.
Finding the Bahai World faith in 1918 & later Zen Buddhism was essential to Tobey's life & work, with themes of oneness & progression. His commitment to spiritual expression in painting, gave Tobey a renowned reputation as a modernist but h moree appreciated in Europe & Asia than in the USA.
Tobey:"There have been 32 isms since the advent of cubism, we have just been confused by the storm. . . we forget that there are today great men in the religious field with as much to offer. . . religion like science must be balanced to bring men to a state of equilibrium & that and that only will bring peace."
Tobey was mid-west born & raised. In Chicago he briefly attended the Art Institute School. He worked as a commercial illustrator, & from 1911 to 1922, he lived & worked in NYC where he did fashion illustration for McCalls magazine & other publications.
Between 1923 & 1960, he lived in Seattle & Paris. In Seattle, where he worked closely with artists in the city’s large Asian community, he studied Chinese brush-work.
Living in Seattle, he developed his signature technique of "white writing", linked to Asian calligraphy. His paintings reflect substance but not solidity, suggesting space with non-space & strokes of spirituality of the cosmos.
He was the first painter of the Pacific Northwest School to achieve international fame. Personally, he was an irritable, irascible man with many difficult relationships & only a few close friends.
A man of his time, he was not fully out of the closet, but his homosexuality was an open secret. In 1960 Tobey moved to Basel, Switzerland with his partner of 20 years, artist- Pehr Hallsten & his secretary- Mark Ritter. Tobey continued to live with Ritter, after Hallsten's death in 1966, He served as Chairman of the Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Basel for 16 years until his death in 1976. Tobey would have been 121 years old today.
Canticle 1960
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