The Multifaceted Life of Mark Turbyfill

Born in 1896 in the small town of Wynnewood, Oklahoma, Mark Turbyfill entered a world shaped by the steady hands of his parents. His father, a man who began his life as a carpenter before finding his calling as an architect, provided a foundation of structure and form. His mother, a Texan, brought her own spirit to the household. This early environment, rooted in the American landscape, would eventually give way to the bustling energy of Chicago, where Turbyfill would establish himself as a man of many disciplines.

The path of his life was not a straight line, but rather a series of shifts between movement and word. Before he was known for his visual art or his verse, he was a man of the stage. After serving in the military during World War I, he turned his attention to the grace of dance. His professional career in dance began in 1919, a period of physical expression that would inform the rhythm of his later creative pursuits. He moved through the world with a dancer's sense of poise, eventually finding a home in the artistic circles of Chicago.

Turbyfill was a man who refused to be confined to a single medium. He lived a life that bridged the gap between the spoken word, the movement of the body, and the pigment on a page. Whether he was navigating the complexities of a poem or the discipline of a dance, he remained a figure of constant transition. His existence was a continuous dialogue between these different forms of expression, making him a rare presence in the cultural life of his time.

Poetry and Literary Achievements

Before his brush and movement defined his later years, Turbyfill sought his place through the written word. His early promise was recognized by the literary establishment when he secured the Young Poets Prize from Poetry magazine, a distinction he held from 1917 through 1919. This period of intense creative output saw his verses finding homes in influential publications, including The Little Review and Poetry magazine itself. By 1921, his voice had gained enough substance to merit a published volume, The Living Frieze, which was released in a limited edition by Monroe Wheeler.

As the 1920s progressed, his poetic identity continued to evolve alongside his other pursuits. In 1926, he was honored with the Helen Haire Levinson Prize for poetry, a recognition that preceded the publication of A Marriage in Space, and Other Poems in 1927. His writing was never a solitary endeavor; it was deeply intertwined with the rhythms of his life as a dancer. This connection became most apparent in his later work, The Words Beneath Us: Balletic Poems, published in 1951. This collection was a unique hybrid, weaving together his poetry with photographs of experimental performances, capturing the very essence of movement through language.

Visual Art Practice and Style

The transition into visual art began in 1931, marking a new chapter in a life already shaped by movement and verse. His early works carried the dreamlike weight of surrealist influence, exploring imagery that seemed to drift between the conscious and the subconscious. As the years passed, this approach evolved, eventually moving toward a style reminiscent of abstract expressionism. He maintained this dedicated practice for decades, continuing to develop his visual language until the 1970s.

What truly distinguished his hand was the way he wove his literary life into his visual one. He did not keep his poetry and his painting in separate realms; instead, he lifted texts from his own poems and integrated them directly into his drawings and paintings. This fusion of word and image resulted in a unique method of creation, where the written line became a physical part of the composition. These specific works, which incorporated his poetic texts into his drawings, were described by observers as "Turbyfiligrees."

His compositions often bridged the gap between the figurative and the abstract. Whether he was working on a portrait or a purely non-objective piece, the presence of his own words provided a mythic quality to the work. This practice allowed his paintings and drawings to act as a visual extension of his earlier literary explorations, creating a singular continuity across his many years of creative output.

Notable Works and Museum Collections

The physical remnants of his creative life are scattered across several institutions, preserving the traces of a man who moved between the stage and the canvas. The Smithsonian American Art Museum holds his work Night Flower, a piece created in 1964 using casein and watercolor on paperboard. This work remains a significant part of their permanent collection, having been gifted to the museum by the artist himself in 1968.

In Chicago, the Smart Museum of Art maintains a collection of his paintings and watercolors. Their holdings include representative works on paper produced between the 1950s and the mid-1960s. These pieces offer a glimpse into the visual language he developed during those decades. Beyond his paintings, the Newberry Library preserves his papers, ensuring that his written thoughts and personal records remain accessible to those studying his multifaceted career.