Conrad Marca-Relli

One of the most important representatives of the American Abstract Expressionist group, Conrad Marca-Relli, born in Boston in 1913 of Italian parents, held his first one-man exhibition in New York in 1947. He later founded, together with Rothko, Franz Kline, De Kooning and others, the Eighth Street Club and was among the promoters of the Ninth Street Abstract Expressionists' show. In 1951, after a stay in Europe, he moved to East Hampton, Long Island. During the following decade, he received numerous awards and teaching appointments, among which the Logan Medal of the Art Institute of Chicago (1954), Visiting Critic at Yale University (1954-1955), and Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley (1958). During the same period, exhibitions of his work took place in New York, as well as in Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Germany and France. In 1967 the Whitney Museum of American Art dedicated a retrospective exhibition to him. In the 1970s and 1980s his work was being exhibited in some of the most important American galleries and museums. In 1997 he moved to Europe. His works are present in some of the most prestigious public and private collections of contemporary art.