1890
Born in Centerville, Wisconsin, on December 11 to George Baker Tobey, a carpenter, bricklayer, and farmer, and Emma Jane Tobey. Mark is the youngest of four children.
1894
Family moves to Trempealeau, Wisconsin, where Tobey spends his childhood and adolescence.
1906
Family moves to Hammond, Indiana. Attends classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. His father falls ill and Tobey gives up academic and artistic studies.
1909
Family moves to Chicago. Tobey works as an apprentice in a fashion house and a fashion designer for a publishing house.
1911
Moves to Greenwich Village in New York City, hoping to succeed as a fashion designer. Works for McCall's Magazine. Moves back to Chicago at the end of the year.
1913
Attends the Armory Show at the Art Institute, Chicago, influencing his views on art.
1913-17
Continues working as a fashion designer in New York and Chicago. Begins painting portraits.
1917
Knoedler, New York holds an exhibition of his portraits. Begins work as an interior decorator.
1918
Becomes a member of the Baha'i community.Discovers William Blake's work at the Pierpont Morgan Library. Earns his living as a caricaturist; his caricatures appear in the New York Times. His marriage dissolves after one year. Meets Marcel Duchamp. Moves to Seattle.
1922-25
Teaches at the Cornish School, Seattle. Befriends Teng Kuei, a Chinese student from Washinton University, who introduces him to East Asian painting and spirituality.
1925
Visits Paris; meets Gertrude Stein.
1926
Travels in Barcelona, Athens, Istanbul, Cairo, and Beirut. Becomes interested in Arabic and Persian calligraphy.
1928
Creates the Free and Creative Art School in Seattle with Edgar Ames. First solo exhibition of his work at the Arts Club of Chicago.
1929
Invited by Alfred H. Barr, Jr. to take part in a 1930/31 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
1930
Asked to teach at the Dartington Hall School in Devonshire, England, run by Leonard and Dorothy Elmhurst; accepts the position and moves to England.
1931-37
Tobey is "resident artist" at Dartington Hall. Meets Pearl S. Buck, Aldous Huxley, Bernard Leach, Rabindranath Tagore, Rudi Shankar and
Others interested in the link between western and eastern cultures.
1932
Travels to Mexico, Europe and Palestine.
1934
Travels to China with ceramic artist Bernard Leach, passing through Paris, Rome, Naples, Colombo, and Hong Kong. Visits Teng Kuei and his family in Shanghai. Discovers the Nô and Kabuki theater. Spends a month in a Zen monastery near Kyoto where he studies Zen philosophy and painting, calligraphy, and meditation, inspiring his "white writings". Returns to the United States.
1935
At Dartington Hall, paints Broadway norm, Broadway and Welcome here, the painting which marked the beginnings of his "white writings."
1936
Spends the summer teaching in Tacoma, Washington.
1937
Teaches in Seattle that summer.
1938
Tobey gives up teaching at Dartington Hall; has trouble readjusting to life in Seattle.
1939
Befriends Pehr Hallsten.
1940
Awarded the Baker Memorial Award, Northwest Annual Exhibition, Seattle Art Museum.
1941
Begins taking lessons in piano and music theory.
1942
During the exhibition "Artists for Victory" at the Museum of Modern Art, his painting Broadway is sold.
1944
First solo exhibition at the Willard Gallery, New York with favorable press reviews. His work begins to receive national acclaim.
1945
Julia and Lyonel Feininger write the text for the catalogue of Tobey's exhibition at the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Oregon. Exchanges work with Feininger, starting a lasting friendship until Feininger's death in 1956.
1948
Participates in the Venice Biennale.
1951
Josef Albers invites Tobey to spend three months at the Yale University Art Department. Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York.
1952
Mark Tobey: Artist, made in 1951 by Robert G. Gardener with sound and script by Tobey, is shown at the Venice and Edinburgh film festivals.
1954
Spends productive period in New York from February to June. Begins work on the Meditative Series. Meets Michel Tapié and Georges Mathieu in Paris.
1955
Visits Basel, Bern and the south of France. A retrospective exhibition is held at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London.
1956
Takes part in the collective exhibition at the Tate Gallery, London, entitled 'American Painting' with Kline, de Kooning, Motherwell, Pollock, Rothko and Still. Tobey is made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters; receives the Guggenheim International Award. Participates in the Venice Biennale.
1956-57
Period of Zen literature and philosophy (Suzuki). Paints the 'Sumi' ink paintings.
1958
Receives the Great International Award at the Venice Biennale.
1959
Completes the mural created for the Washington State Library, Olympia. Takes part in the Documenta II in Kassel.
1960
Refuses membership to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Moves to a house in Basel in the St. Alban-Vorstadt with Pehr Hallsten and Mark Ritter, leading a quiet life of painting, music, and friends. As a representative of the United States, takes part in "East-West", a congress in Vienna organized by the Association of Plastic Arts.
1961
Awarded first prize at 'The 1961 International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture' at the Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. Retrospective at the Musée des arts décoratifs in Paris.
1962
Retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
1964
Completes the mural for the Seattle Opera House. Participates in the Venice Biennale.
1968
Awarded Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in Paris.
1970
Retrospective entitled "Tobey's 80" at the Seattle Art Museum.
1974
Exhibition entitled 'Tribute to Mark Tobey' at the National Collectionof Fine Arts, Washinton.
1976
Dies 24 April in Basel.