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©
VEGAP, Madrid
Mark Tobey

Earth Rhythms

1961
Gouache on Cardboard.
67 x 49 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
771
(
1968.13
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 19th Century. The Impressionist Period 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 54 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 55 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 56 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop
The American abstract painter Mark Tobey’s greatest aspiration was to convey universal themes in his works. This distances him from his contemporaries, such as Pollock and Rothko, who were more concerned with capturing their own existential anguish. Although Tobey never lost contact with his country of birth, in 1960, shortly after being awarded the International Great Prize at the Venice Biennale of 1958, Tobey moved to Basel permanently. In Europe he was acclaimed by the followers of matter painting, who espoused the ideas of the French theoretician Michel Tapié.

Earth Rhythms, executed in 1961, is a perfect example of Tobey’s delicate, linear style derived both from observation and from Surrealist automatism and Oriental mysticism, which influenced him following his trip to China and Japan in 1934. His conversion to the Baha’i faith in 1918, a syncretic religion originating from Iran which advocates values similar to Buddhism based on the unity of the whole of creation, and his learning of Oriental calligraphy, would mark him forever.

As in most of Tobey’s paintings, in the present composition he builds an all-over pictorial structure from earthy shades splashed with light touches of reds, blues and purples in a series of floating, interlaced calligraphic forms that make up his own particular spatial representation of the cosmos. The tension between surface and depth, between light and shade, between automatism and the elegance of gesture, without any special emphasis on any fragment of the picture surface, can be linked to his devotion to music, which made him aware of the importance of rhythm, as alluded to in the title of the painting. The musical aspect of his painting led John Cage to confess that Mark Tobey was one of the visual artists who had most greatly influenced him and wished to demonstrate this by dedicating 25 Mesostics Re and Not Re Mark Tobey to him in 1972.

Paloma Alarcó
20th Centurys. XX - Expresionismo abstracto norteamericanoPaintingGouacheCardboard
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  • Private and/or didactic use
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Private and/or didactic use
Earth Rhythms. Ritmos de la tierra, 1961
Earth Rhythms
Mark Tobey

©

VEGAP, Madrid

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Earth Rhythms. Ritmos de la tierra, 1961
Earth Rhythms
Mark Tobey

©

VEGAP, Madrid

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