75th Anniversary Collectors Forum Purchases

William Ivey, Untitled

Following service in World War II, William Ivey studied at the California School of Fine Arts, where he was influenced by Clifford Still, Mark Rothko, and emerging abstract expressionists.  In 1948, Ivey returned to Seattle and developed his individual style of abstract expressionism.  Ivey has had major solo exhibitions in both the United States and Europe, and his work can be found in over 300 collections. Ivey has had solo exhibitions at the Seattle Art Museum and Portland Art Museum. The Henry Gallery at the University of Washington honored Ivey with a major retrospective exhibition and he has received numerous awards, including the Rockefeller Fellowship, the Ford Foundation Purchase award, and a grant from the National Foundation for Arts and Humanities.

William Ivey
Untitled, 1981, 75” x 57”, Oil on canvas.

Permanent Collection,
2012 75th Anniversary Collectors Forum Purchase.

George Tsutakawa, Reflection

Seattle artist George Tsutakawa dedicated his life to art and the freedom of expression.  He worked in a number of media, including paint, bronze and clay, and is most widely known for his fountains and sculptures.  Born in Seattle in 1910, Tsutakawa went to live with his maternal grandmother in Japan from 1917 to 1927. Upon his return to Seattle, he began to study art, influenced by his time in Japan as well as the beauty of the Pacific Northwest region and the art of his contemporaries of the Northwest School.  Tsutakawa attended the University of Washington, received his MFA in 1950, and subsequently taught there until 1976.  Tsutakawa passed away December 18, 1997, at the age of 87.

Mark Tobey, Untitled
Mark Tobey was associated with the Northwest School since the 1940s and ‘50s and helped draw national attention to work being produced in the Northwest. As an artist, he was influenced by the teachings of the Baha’i faith, East Asian painting, and calligraphy.  In his work, Tobey focused on man, nature, God, unity and equilibrium. He used space as a theme as well as an illusion of painting. For him, it represented the universal atmosphere as well as the “inner space” conceived by the mind. Tobey advocated the integration of object and space in a “unified field image.” Tobey is famous for his "white writing" paintings, which consist of white marks covering the surface of an abstract field of color made up of thousands of brushstrokes.

In 1956 he was awarded the United States National Prize in the Guggenheim International Awards and elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters; in 1958 he won first prize for painting at the Venice Biennale. Tobey’s work is included in public and private collections around the world including the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Guggenheim Museum, NY, the Tate Modern, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.