Details

Provenance

Christie's, South Kensington, 6 April 2006, Lot 323 Private Collection Christie's, New York, 21 September 2011, Lot 329 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Catalog summary

CONRAD MARCA-RELLI 1913 - 2000 UNTITLED signed gesso, gouache and canvas and burlap collage on canvas Canvas: 26 by 23¼ in. (66 by 59 cm.) Framed: 26¾ by 24 in. (68 by 61 cm.) Executed circa 1975. This work is registered with the Archivio Marca-Relli, Parma, as archive number MARE-6080 / © Archivio Marca-Relli, Parma PROVENANCE Christie's, South Kensington, 6 April 2006, Lot 323 Private Collection Christie's, New York, 21 September 2011, Lot 329 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Provenance Christie's, South Kensington, 6 April 2006, Lot 323 Private Collection Christie's, New York, 21 September 2011, Lot 329 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Catalogue note In his 1963 monograph on Conrad Marca-Relli, H.H. Arnason describes the moment in the artist’s career when, in the early 1950s, Marca-Relli abandoned his de Chirico influenced cityscapes, full of dust, melancholy, and noonday ghosts, for his signature paint-and-canvas collages. These works, for which the artist is justly celebrated, rank amongst the finest achievements of the New York School Abstract Expressionists. His works from the period are evenly filled with incident, but with individual forms rigorously subordinate to the composition of the whole. Unlike some of his peers in the New York school, Marca-Relli’s mode of painting and collage was not necessarily expressive. His surfaces are built by fragment and increment in such a manner that it is easy to compare Marca-Relli’s palate of brown and pepper-grey to that of Cubism.