Artist
Mark Tobey
Centerville 1890 — 1976 Basel, Switzerland
Tobey moved with his family from rural Wisconsin to the environs of Chicago where he attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He moved to New York to work as a fashion illustrator and had considerable early success with his unique, meditative “all-over” canvases that reflected his embrace of the Baha’i faith. They are seen as precursors of American Abstract Expressionism. Retrospective exhibitions were held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.