Italian-American (1913-2000)

Marca-Relli was a primarily self-taught artist and an inveterate traveler who bridged the American and European art worlds. He spent much of his childhood moving back and forth between the United States and Europe. He was an important figure in the post-WWII New York art world, a first generation abstract expressionist painter primarily known for his collage paintings, and a noted teacher--he taught Elaine De Kooning, among others.  His work is in numerous museum collections.

During the Depression, Marca-Relli, like many American artists, supported himself by working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), first as a teacher and then with the easel and mural painting divisions of the Federal Art Project. At this time, he came into contact with progressive artists, including Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and John Graham, who exposed him to modernist artistic trends. 

After serving in the army during World War II, Marca-Relli returned to New York and to painting. He initially depicted cityscapes and carnival scenes in a Surrealist style, influenced by the work of Giorgio de Chirico, Henri Rousseau, and Joan Miró, before turning to a more abstract style in the early 1950s.

During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Marca-Relli was actively involved in the avant-garde art world in Greenwich Village. He helped to found the “Eighth Street Club,” an artists’ group whose members included de Kooning, Kline, and Jack Tworkov, and he assisted the art dealer Leo Castelli in the organization of the first “Ninth Street Show,” arguably the first comprehensive display of Abstract Expressionist work.

Marca-Relli is best known for his monumental collage paintings. Although the precise nature of his shift to collage is debated among scholars, his second trip to Mexico in 1952 played a pivotal role—perhaps because of a lack of paint or his fascination with the play of light on adobe houses (both have been cited as sources of his first foray into collage). From 1955 to 1958, Marca-Relli created a series of expressive collage action paintings that conveyed a dynamism characteristic of Abstract Expressionism.

His work can be found in numerous museum collections, including the Met, MOMA, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, the High Museum, the Peggy Guggenheim Foundation, the Wadsforth Atheneun and many others.