Conrad Marca-Relli (1913-2000)

Conrad Marca-Relli is best known for his affiliation with Abstract Expressionism and the New York School. Alongside Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning and Franz Kline, Marca-Relli created some of the most progressive art in Postwar America. Marca-Relli began his artistic career as a painter, but he would later be recognized as one of the most innovative pioneers of collage. By combining oil painting and elements of collage, such as in the current lot, an impressive sense of vigour resonates. The fragmented surfaces and expressionist brushwork demonstrate the dynamic tension between colour and form. Indeed, as William Agee, the former curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art wrote, Marca-Relli's 'achievement has been to raise collage to a scale and complexity equal to that of monumental painting.' (W.C. Agee, Conrad Marca-Relli, New York 1967).