Mark Tobey
Symbols over the West

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Artist Mark Tobey (American, 1890–1976)American, 1890–1976

CultureAmerican

Titles

Symbols over the West

Date1957

MediumSumi ink on wove paper, mounted on paper board

DimensionsSheet: 44 1/2 × 35 in. (113 × 88.9 cm)
Frame: 45 7/8 × 36 3/8 × 1 1/4 in. (116.5 × 92.4 × 3.2 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by the Caroline Wiess Law Accessions Endowment

Object number2019.178

Not on view

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Department

Prints and Drawings

Object Type

DRAWINGS, PASTELS & WATERCOLORS

ProvenanceGeorge David Thompson (Newark, Ohio, 1899 - Pittsburgh, 1965), Pittsburgh, by 1960 - possibly 1965; possibly his sale, [Parke Bernet, 1965]; [Janie C. Lee Gallery, Houston]; Collection of William J. Hill, Houston; purchased by MFAH, 2019.

1 Based in Pittsburgh, George David Thompson was an American investment banker, industrialist, and renowned collector of modern art, Islamic art, and American folk art. He obtained an engineering degree from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1920, and then, he turned to finance. In 1933, Thompson cofounded Thompson and Taylor, a firm that took control of a number of steel manufacturing companies during the Great Depression. He lived in Stone’s Throw, an estate in Whitehall just outside of Pittsburgh that housed his vast art collection.

Thompson began acquiring art in 1928 with the purchase of a work by Paul Klee, an artist whose work became a focal point of Thompson’s collecting. He amassed extensive holdings of work by Alberto Burri, Jean Dubuffet, Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, and Kurt Schwitters. Cubist works were also included in his collection by George Braque, Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris and Fernand Léger. Thompson intended to give his collection to Pittsburgh to begin an art center in collaboration with the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, but those plans fell through in 1960. So, he began to de-accession his vast holdings. A large portion of Thompson’s collection, approximately 350 objects were sold to the Swiss dealer Ernst Beyeler (Fondation Beyeler). He also sold 88 works by Paul Klee to the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia (Kunstsammlung Nordhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf). In the 1960’s, a selection of the collection was shown, including this work on paper, at the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf; Kunsthaus, Zürich; and the Municipal Düsseldorf Museum, The Hague. A year after Thompson’s death, in 1966, a group of 112 lots were sold at Parke-Bernet Galleries in New York, and the final group of approximately 100 works were purchased by the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa). Throughout Thompson’s lifetime, small donations of art objects were given to a variety of institutions, such as the Carnegie Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Fogg Museum, Harvard University Art Museums (See One Hundred Paintings from the G. David Thompson Collection, exh. cat. [New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1961]).

Exhibition History"Mark Tobey: sumi paintings," Willard Gallery, New York, November 12–December 7, 1957.

"Panorama," Galerie Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland, October–November 1959.

"Barr, Alfred H., Jr, Thompson, Pittsburgh: au seiner amerikanischen Privatsammlung," Kunsthaus, Zurich, October 15–November 1960; Kunstmuseum, Dusseldorf, December 14, 1960–January 1961; The Hague.

"Mark Tobey: Retrospective," Museé du Louvre, Paris, October 18–December 1, 1961.

"Mark Tobey: Ausstellung," Galerie Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland, May–June, 1961.

"XXXI exposizione biennale internazionale d’arte," Biennale de Venezia, Venice, 1962.

"Tobey Ausstellung," Stedlijk Museum, Amsterdam, March 18–May 8, 1966; Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover, Germany, May 19–June 26, 1966; Kunsthalle, Bern; Kunstverein fur die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Dusseldorf, Germany.

"Navigliovenezia presenta: omaggio a Mark Tobey," Galleria Navigliovenezia, Venice, September–October 1978.

"Around Midcentury in the United States," The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Oct. 28, 2020 – July 27, 2021. [Inaugural Installation: Kinder Building 207: No Catalog]

Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

Recto: Signed and dated in sumi ink at bottom right: Tobey ‘57

Recto: Signed in ink, bottom right corner: Tobey '57

Exhibition stickers on frame verso

Catalogue raisonnéNone

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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