Conrad Marca-Relli
TAGGART HOLLIS
521 W 26th Street, 1st Floor, New York, NY 10001
T: +1 212.628.4000 e-mail:
Multiple location : New York NY Southport CT
June, 2022
MRO9855-Untitled from 1958 is a superb example of Conrad Marca-Relli's celebrated collage aesthetic and subdued color palette. The composition is enlivened by bold red and black stripes, which recall his early circus-inspired surrealist paintings. A pioneer of Abstract Expressionism and a first-generation member of the New York School, Marca-Relli conceived of collage as a means for reaching the limits of abstraction and as a "discipline," noting that "[collage] is a way in which I can work so as to do the same thing over and over again and keep the freshness of the canvas... You can just keep on gluing and gluing a hundred times until you get the shape you want, the relationship you want, you can lock up forms the way you want." (1)
In 1967, William Agee, then curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, wrote in the exhibition catalogue for the artist's retrospective: "Marca-Relli's achievement has been to raise collage to a scale and complexity equal to that of monumental painting... Beginning in 1953, he accepted the potential risks inherent in collage and developed it as a complete pictorial system essentially without precedent in modern art." (2) Indeed, Marca-Relli is most well-known today for his collages that are composed of pieces of canvas or natural linen overpainted with gestural brushstrokes. Nurturing a strong affinity for his Italian heritage, he drew influence from Giorgio de Chirico, Paolo Uccello, and Giorgio Morandi, as well as from Italian Renaissance architecture.
Born in 1913 to Italian immigrant parents, Conrad Marca-Relli was primarily a self-taught artist. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Marca-Relli was active in the New York avant-garde art world and helped found the "Eighth Street Club," a historic artists' group whose members included Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. Around this time, his paintings were acquired by the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum. In 1953, he purchased a house near that of Jackson Pollock in the Springs, East Hampton and three years later, identified Pollock's body for the police after his fatal car accident, an experience that moved him to paint The Death of Jackson Pollock the same year. The first major retrospective of his work was held in 1967 at the Whitney in New York. He has been the subject of numerous exhibitions and his work is collected in most major institutions.
1. William C. Agee, Marca-Relli (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1967), 9.
2. Dorothy Seckler, unpublished interview with Marca-Relli (June 10, 1965, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.).
In 1967, William Agee, then curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, wrote in the exhibition catalogue for the artist's retrospective: "Marca-Relli's achievement has been to raise collage to a scale and complexity equal to that of monumental painting... Beginning in 1953, he accepted the potential risks inherent in collage and developed it as a complete pictorial system essentially without precedent in modern art." (2) Indeed, Marca-Relli is most well-known today for his collages that are composed of pieces of canvas or natural linen overpainted with gestural brushstrokes. Nurturing a strong affinity for his Italian heritage, he drew influence from Giorgio de Chirico, Paolo Uccello, and Giorgio Morandi, as well as from Italian Renaissance architecture.
Born in 1913 to Italian immigrant parents, Conrad Marca-Relli was primarily a self-taught artist. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Marca-Relli was active in the New York avant-garde art world and helped found the "Eighth Street Club," a historic artists' group whose members included Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. Around this time, his paintings were acquired by the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum. In 1953, he purchased a house near that of Jackson Pollock in the Springs, East Hampton and three years later, identified Pollock's body for the police after his fatal car accident, an experience that moved him to paint The Death of Jackson Pollock the same year. The first major retrospective of his work was held in 1967 at the Whitney in New York. He has been the subject of numerous exhibitions and his work is collected in most major institutions.
1. William C. Agee, Marca-Relli (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1967), 9.
2. Dorothy Seckler, unpublished interview with Marca-Relli (June 10, 1965, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.).
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