A pivotal figure in American Abstract Expressionism, Conrad Marca-Relli (1913–2000) was a friend of Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Afro, Alberto Burri, and Giuseppe Capogrossi. Marca-Relli founded the Eight Street Club and was a driving force behind the Ninth Street Show, one of the most significant art exhibitions in New York during the 1950s, and he worked both in Europe and America.
Published in collaboration with the Archivio Marca-Relli, housed at the Niccoli Gallery in Parma, this monograph reflects on the key moments in the career of the Italian-American artist. It meticulously documents the profound influence of Marca-Relli and his artwork on both the American and international art scenes. In the years following the Second World War, Conrad Marca-Relli emerged as one of the leading figures in the New York art scene. Initially affiliated with the Downton Group, he later founded the Eight Street Club in 1949, with Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, and William de Kooning. A friend of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, Marca-Relli was also a lecturer at Yale and Berkeley. Whitney Museum dedicated him a solo exhibition in 1967.
A tireless traveler between the United States and Europe, Conrad Marca-Relli moved to Parma in 1997. This move was prompted by his collaboration with the Galleria d’Arte Niccoli, to establish the Archivio Marca-Relli in the same year. Since its inception, the archive has contributed to all the exhibitions dedicated to the artist, including the major retrospective hosted in the Rotonda di Via Besana in Milan in 2008.
Marca-Relli’s works are part of numerous collections, including the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET), the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, the MoMA in San Francisco, the Peggy Guggenheim Foundation in Venice, the National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C.