Conrad Marca-relli Biography
Conrad Marca-Relli (Boston, June 5, 1913 – Parma, August 29, 2000) was an American painter. After the war Marca-Relli took part in the “Downtown Group”, a group of artists who set up their studios in lower Manhattan between the late 40s and early 50s. During this period (late 40s early 50s) he was very attracted to the avant-garde art world of Greenwich Village. These artists are called the Downtown Group in opposition to those of the Uptown Group formed during the war at the Art of This Century Gallery. In 1949 he founded the Eight Street Club with Mark Rothko, Franz Kline and William de Kooning, promoter of the first exhibition on American abstract expressionism. He was selected by the other artists to exhibit at the Ninth Street Show held from May 21 to June 10, 1951. The exhibition was set up on the first floor of 60 East on 9th Street in a building that was scheduled to be demolished. Conrad Marca-Relli is among the 24 artists out of 256 belonging to the New York School included in the Ninth Street Show and present in all the Painting and Sculpture Yearbooks from 1953 to 1957. These Yearbooks are important because the participants are chosen by the artists themselves. During his lifetime Marca-Relli created collages on a monumental scale. He combines oil painting and collage, developing very intense colors, irregular surfaces and expressionist sketches. He also experiments with metallic and plastic materials. Over the years the collages take on an abstract simplicity, highlighted by dark colors and rectangular shapes isolated on a neutral background. In 1953 he bought a house adjacent to that of his friends, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, in Springs, East Hampton. One of his most famous works dates back to 1956: The death of Jackson Pollock, conceived after being called to recognize the body of his friend Jackson Pollock, who tragically died in a car accident. Marca-Relli taught at Yale University from 1954 to 1955 and then from 1959 to 1960, and also at the University of California at Berkeley. His first solo exhibition was organized in New York in 1948 and in 1967 the Whitney Museum of American Art dedicated a retrospective to him. Between the seventies and eighties he spent long periods in Ibiza and other European capitals, including Paris, London and Rome. In 1997 he moved with his wife Anita Gibson to Parma, as a consequence of a long and constant collaboration with the Niccoli Art Gallery. The following year the Peggy Guggenheim Collection Foundation in Venice dedicated an important solo exhibition to him entitled "Homage to Marca-Relli".
