Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/668986
26 Meanders, 1968 Signed 'Tobey' and dated '68' lower left Tempera on paper 12 3 / 8 x 8 7 / 8 in, 31.5 x 22.5 cm Provenance Jeanne Bucher (acquired directly from the artist) Exhibitions Maryland, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Kay Hillman Collection, 23 May - 27 August 1972 New York, M. Knoedler & Co, Inc., Mark Tobey, 1976 Lisbon, Fundaçao Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva, Mark Tobey, 30 June - 24 September 1995 Literature Lisbon, Jean-François Jaeger, Mark Tobey, Fundaçao Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva, 1995, no.25 (illus. in colour) MARK TOBEY 1890-1976 Mark Tobey was one of countless American artists that came to Paris during the early 20 th century to immerse themselves in the European abstract aesthetic. Following his travels to the Middle East and China, Tobey forged a poetic vocabulary in organic abstraction inspired by both Eastern calligraphy and European Modernism. This expressive style of painting mirrored the tension between the conscious and unconscious mind in Eastern art as well the internal sensations of the natural world. Tobey argued that 'pure abstraction for me would be a painting where one finds no correspondence to life – an impossiblity for me'. Meanders is characteristic of Tobey's lyrical technique that simultaneously layered calligraphic and biomorphic brushstrokes of white paint over an abstract ground. The title is evocative of the fluid twists of a river through the natural landscape as well as the path of wandering thoughts, woven through the mind. Much in the same manner as Vieira da Silva, Tobey created images about the constant flux between the visual world and subjective experience. This late work forms part of the almost translucent series of paintings made from Tobey's studio in Basel in the final years of his life. During this period in the 1960s in Paris, Tobey became the first painter to be the subject of a major retrospective at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs (1961).