Mark Tobey is regarded founding father of Abstract Expressionism and an important international representative of calligraphic abstraction.
Mark Tobey, who was mostly self-taught, started out as a commercial artist. During a journey to the Far East (1934-1935) he had encountered Chinese and Japanese calligraphy, he even lived in a Zen monastery in Kyoto for some time. This experience marked the beginning of the ground-breaking development of his renowned "White Writings": a filigree mesh that rhythmically spans the image carrier, initially leaving room for motif associations, it soon finds its way to a total abstraction. Mark Tobey, who brought his method of abstraction to perfection in numerous print and painting techniques, thus became an important precursor of Abstract Expressionism.
International exhibitions such as the in the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid (1997) honored the innovative work of Mark Tobey.