Wild Field
Mark Tobey
American, 1890–1976
1959
An all-over tempera-on-board composition in which Tobey transforms meditative, calligraphic gestures into a dense, ‘wild’ field of looping, written strokes.
Close up the painting feels like a vibrating carpet of tiny, interlaced black, white and blue marks that gradually thins into a luminous, misty area at the top, suggesting depth and motion.
Part of Tobey’s influential “white writing,” this work fused East Asian calligraphic sensibility and spiritual contemplation with Abstract Expressionist energy, helping broaden postwar modernism toward global, meditative abstraction.
Medium
Tempera on board
Dimensions
26 5/8 x 27 5/8" (67.8 x 70.2 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection
Accession
658.1967
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
