Lugano
Conrad Marca-Relli (born Corrado di Marcarelli) was born in 1913 in Boston to Italian parents and spent his childhood between Europe and the United States. In the late 1920s, he settled in New York, where he began his artistic training and quickly became immersed in the city’s vibrant cultural scene.
After serving in the military during World War II, he returned to New York in 1946 and became a member of the Downtown Group, a collective of avant-garde artists with studios in Greenwich Village, in lower Manhattan. The following year, he held his first solo exhibition at the Niveau Gallery in New York. Marca-Relli was a key figure in the New York School and among the early pioneers of Abstract Expressionism.
In 1949, he co-founded the Eighth Street Club with Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, and Willem de Kooning, aiming to promote the emerging Abstract Expressionist movement. In 1951, he participated in the landmark Ninth Street Show, exhibiting alongside Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline, and gallerist Leo Castelli. This pivotal exhibition marked the official emergence of Abstract Expressionism and the style known as “Action Painting,” named for its dynamic and revolutionary painting methods.
In the early 1950s, he anglicized his name to Conrad Marca-Relli to make it easier to pronounce in English. Best known for his collage work, from 1955 to 1958 Marca-Relli created a series of expressive collage paintings that conveyed the dynamic energy characteristic of Abstract Expressionism. After 1961, he began experimenting with new materials in his collages, such as synthetic plastics and metals.
From 1947 onward, Marca-Relli held numerous solo exhibitions, including shows at Il Cortile in Rome (1948); New Gallery in New York (1950, 1951); Stable Gallery (1953–58); Kootz Gallery (1959–62); Galerie de France in Paris (1962); a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (1967); Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf (1971); and Marlborough Gallery in New York (1970).
In 1997, he moved to Parma, Italy, where he spent the last years of his life. He passed away there on August 29, 2000. Shortly before his death, he was granted honorary Italian citizenship.
Marca-Relli is widely regarded as a bridge between American and European culture, thanks to his ability to merge the dramatic intensity of Abstract Expressionism with the sense of order found in Italian Renaissance painting. He quickly gained an international reputation, and his works are held in the world’s most prestigious museum collections.
