Mark Tobey was born December 11, 1890, in Centerville, Wisconsin, and grew up in Trempealeau, Wisconsin, and Hammond, Indiana. His only formal art training was painting classes at the Art Institute of Chicago while he was in high school. Tobey's career as an artist began in Chicago as an illustrator for fashion catalogs. After moving to Greenwich Village in 1911, he worked briefly as a fashion illustrator for McCalls. During his early years in New York, Tobey also drew charcoal portraits and in the 1920's became known for his theater caricatures and drawings of vaudeville and burlesque figures.

In 1918 Tobey accepted the Baha'i faith. He remained active in Baha'i circles throughout the rest of his life, studied and taught Baha'i, and contributed financially to the community. Tobey had many Baha'i friends throughout the world, such as Joyce and Arthur Dahl of California, who also became his greatest collectors. Baha'i exterted an important influence on Tobey's work, providing him with aesthetic as well as religious principles.

In 1922 Tobey moved to Seattle and accepted a job teaching art classes at the Cornish School. For the next 38 years, despite long absences in New York and Europe, he made Seattle his home. In Seattle he was first exposed to the art of the Far East when, in 1923, he met Teng Kuei, a young Chinese artist who taught him Chinese brushwork.

From 1927-30 Tobey divided his time between New York, Chicago, and Seattle. In 1930 he moved to Dartington Hall, a progressive school of the arts in England run by Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst, where he taught until 1938. In 1934 Tobey visited China and Japan and spent a month in a Zen monastery. Scholars have seen a connection between Tobey's sojurn in the Orient and the evolution of his mature style. "Broadway Norm," "Broadway" and "Welcome Hero," painted at Dartington in 1935-36, mark the beginning of his interest in the theme of the city and his use of the white calligraphic style. Tobey would not return to this style until the 1940's when he had resettled in Seattle.

Interest in Tobey's work continued in Seattle while Tobey was abroad. In 1934 the fledgling Seattle Art Museum presented a one man show of Tobey's works. With the outbreak of war imminent in Europe, Tobey returned to Seattle in 1938 and worked on the WPA Federal Art Project. In 1939 Nancy Wilson Ross introduced him to Marian Willard whose gallery eventually became his representative in New York (Tobey's first show at the Willard Gallery was in 1944).

The 1940's were a productive time for Tobey in Seattle. He was invariably represented in SAM's Northwest Annual. His controversial "Modal Tide" won the Baker Memorial award in the 1940 Annual, and in 1942 he received another one man show at the Museum. These were also the years of his Pike Place Market drawings.

In 1941 Tobey began piano and music theory lessons with Bertha Poncy Jacobson. He maintained a lifelong interest in music and later studied composition with John Verralla, George Frederick McKay, Lockrem Johnson, and Wesley Wehr.

In 1953 Otto Seligman opened his gallery in Seattle and Tobey had his first one man show there in 1954. Seligman remained Tobey's friend and Seattle dealer until Seligman's death in 1966.

While living in Paris from October 1954 to June 1955, Tobey had a one man show at Jeanne Bucher's gallery. The critical acclaim for this show marked the beginning of his international success. In 1958 he won the first prize at the XXIX Biennale in Venice, the first American since Whistler to receive the award. The same year SAM mounted a Tobey retrospective with 224 paintings.

In 1960 Tobey moved to Basel, Switzerland, with Mark Ritter, his secretary, and Pehr Hallsten, his friend and long-time companion. Tobey kept a studio in Seattle ' s University District, however, and returned in the summers until 1968.

In 1962 John and Anne Hauberg commissioned Tobey to paint a large mural for the Seattle Opera House. The mural, "Journey of the Opera Star, II was installed in 1964.

Throughout the 1960's and early 1970's Tobey continued to paint and achieve international recognition. His work received retrospectives at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris in 1961, the Museum of Modern Art in 1962, the Seattle Art Museum in 1970 ("Tobey's 80"), and the National Collection of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C., in 1974 ("Tribute to Mark Tobey").

Tobey died in 1976.