Referring to the dichotomy between his realist works and his curvilinears and other modernist works, Alton Tobey once said, "I live an artistic double life: one of classical realism and the other of aesthetic exploration."
Realist work
Tobey's murals, illustrations, and portraits show him working in the realistic style for which he is best known. The huge murals on historical subjects are probably the most widely seen of Tobey's works, prominently displayed in many public places in the US and elsewhere. These include public institutions in his native Connecticut; the Smithsonian Institution and other venues in Washington, DC; New York'sIntrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum; and even an officers club in Saudi Arabia. Indeed, the Larchmont Gazette obituary states, "Alton Tobey was best known for the murals, which he called 'symphonies of painting'." Alton Tobey was president of the National Society of Mural Painters from 1984 to 1988. As a realist painter and illustrator, Alton Tobey is also famously the creator of the hundreds of paintings which illustrate the twelve volumes of . Additionally, he did many illustrations for SPORT magazine, Life Magazine and Time-Life books. Millions of children, whether they knew it or not, grew up gazing at Alton Tobey's vivid imaginings of historical events. Michael Bierut wrote for Design Observer magazine a very touching that begins: "Alton Tobey died the week before last. Chances are you've never heard of him, but when I was eight years old, I had no doubt about one thing: Alton Tobey was the best artist in the world." Tobey's works are included in the collection of the National Museum of American Illustration. In his work as a frequently commissioned portraitist, Tobey had the honor of rendering many prominent sitters in paint. These included Pope John Paul II, the poet Robert Frost, and Albert Einstein. In fact, it was while Einstein was sitting for his Tobey portrait, that a cordial acquaintance began which yielded an important gem of artistic inspiration: Einstein's remark that there are really no straight lines in nature led to Alton Tobey's invention of his signature "curvilinear" style - one of his experimental genres.
Abstract and experimental work
Besides the realist works, Tobey also created less well known paintings in several very personal idioms. Among the several experimental styles, perhaps the most original works are those in an abstract idiom using a curious "visual alphabet" of his own invention. These he called his . He created some sculptures in this idiom as well. These abstract works, just as much as those in his realistic vein, display a distinctive and exacting draftsmanship. Also in a modern vein are his series of "fragments": bizarre portraits, mostly of famous people, consisting of extreme closeups of only parts of the head or face, often far off-center. A particularly amusing example is , consisting only of the British Prime Minister's famous hairdo jutting up from the bottom of the canvas. There are also grotesque and piercingly angry paintings of social commentary, sometimes verging on protest art, such as , an over-muscled monster with a tiny infant's head, embodying belligerent and stupid militarism. A portrait of Ronald Reagan called shows the President's head bizarrely stretched and multiplied across the canvas into a menacing, many-eyed creature, culminating on the far right with a disembodied Reagan smile hovering mid-air, bounded by sphincterish wrinkles which extend creepily into the smoky brown background. It would not appear to express reverence or affection for the Gipper — yet it was painted by the same man who painted .
