
White Writing
1959
Mark Tobey's meditative work features delicate white gestural marks applied to buff paper using gouache. The composition exemplifies his distinctive white writing technique that creates a sense of spiritual contemplation.
- Medium
- gouache on buff paper
- Location
- Phillips, Salt Lake City, UT
- Spotted At
- Auction House · PhillipsView on map
🔨 Auction Lot
20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale - Morning Session
November 15, 2017
More by Mark Tobey
Spotted works by Mark Tobey
Artists in conversation

Franz Kline
American · b. 1910

Kline shared Tobey's commitment to gestural calligraphic mark making and abstract expression through bold brushwork, creating compositions where the physical act of writing becomes a meditative and spiritual gesture on the picture plane.

Julius Bissier
German · b. 1893

Bissier worked with delicate ink and gouache marks on paper in a deeply contemplative and spiritually charged manner, combining Eastern calligraphic sensibilities with Western abstraction in ways that closely parallel Tobey's white writing approach.

Cy Twombly
American · b. 1928

Twombly built his entire practice around calligraphic gestural marks and scrawled white linear passages against tonal grounds, creating works charged with the same meditative and quasi sacred energy that defines Tobey's white writing technique.
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