Conrad Marca-Relli, a member of the New York School’s first generation, was a pioneer of Abstract Expressionism who was celebrated for his large-scale collages composed of pieces of canvas or natural linen painted over with gestural brushstrokes. In 1967, William Agee, then curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, praised Marca-Relli’s work, claiming that his “achievement has been to raise collage to a scale and complexity equal to that of monumental painting.” (1)



“S-X-5-78,” created in 1978, can be considered the culmination of Marca-Relli’s work in collage, which he began creating in the 1950s. Working with pieces of cut canvas and burlap, he created layered, jigsaw-like compositions, with oil paint and sometimes black tar, used to reinforce, highlight and offset his forms. “S-X-5-78,” in which bright hues of red and yellow-green complexify white interlocking forms, is exceptional within the artist’s oeuvre for its incorporation of vibrant color into his collage process. 



Born in 1913 to Italian immigrant parents, Marca-Relli was a primarily self-taught artist and an inveterate traveler who bridged the American and European art worlds. 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. 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.



His work is held in dozens of institutional collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art; Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; Walker Art Center; Yale University Art Gallery; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Harvard University Art Museums; among many others. 



1.  William C. Agee, Marca-Relli (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1967), 9.