Tobeen

Tobeen was born Felix Elie Bonnet on 20 July 1880 in Bordeaux, France, and adopted the pseudonym Tobeen for his artistic career. No formal art academy training is documented. Early biographical sources describe him gaining his first professional skills in his father's and uncle's woodworking and decorative workshops, then apprenticing with the Bordeaux artist Emile Brunet, after which his development is described as largely self-taught.

He became associated with Cubism through the Section d'Or, the Paris based group of artists who exhibited together at the Galerie La Boetie in 1912. His painting Pelotaris, depicting Basque pelota players, was shown at the Salon des Independants in Paris that same year and was purchased by the influential critic Theodore Duret. In 1913 his work traveled to New York for the Armory Show, and in 1914 he exhibited with the Manes Union of Fine Arts in Prague.

Basque Country subjects, including pelota players and coastal dune landscapes, recur throughout his output. After 1920 he settled in Saint Valery sur Somme, a coastal town in northern France, where he died in March 1938. The exact day of his death has not been confirmed with certainty from the sources reviewed.

A 2012 exhibition, Tobeen, un poete du cubisme, at the museum of fine arts in Bordeaux, placed him within the history of French Cubism for a contemporary audience. Gazette Drouot has described him as an avant garde figure of the Basque Country art scene, reflecting the regional subject matter, pelota players and coastal landscapes, that distinguishes his Cubism from that of his Parisian contemporaries. No verbatim, attributable critical quotations could be confirmed for reproduction here.

Tobeen's auction market is small and irregularly traded. The specialist site Auctie's reports that his prices have ranged from about EUR 20 to roughly EUR 334,000, and identifies his 1912 oil on canvas Pelotaris as his strongest documented result, selling for over EUR 360,500 in 2013. The auction house, sale location, and exact calendar date of that sale are not confirmed in the sources reviewed. MutualArt separately cites realized prices up to USD 585,900 for paintings, though this figure could not be tied to a specific, independently verified sale. No gallery or estate is currently documented as representing Tobeen's work; it circulates through auction houses and secondary market dealers tracked by services such as MutualArt, Invaluable, Artprice, and askART.

No catalogue raisonne has been identified for Tobeen, and no certificate of authenticity program is documented. A dedicated archival website, tobeen.org, and individual auction house catalog notes, including those produced for Pelotaris, are the main available reference points, and provenance research should draw on both. Collectors should also note that basic biographical facts, the exact day of his birth beyond 20 July 1880 and the exact day of his death in March 1938, are not corroborated across multiple primary sources, and that his wide reported price range signals a market where individual results vary significantly rather than tracing a steady line.