Who was Conrad Marca-Relli? Figureheads of the so-called New York School such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko have long since become art world icons — with attention-grabbing auction prices, fat biographies and plays or films about them to match. By comparison, few people in this country are likely to have heard of Marca-Relli. Tate Modern owns not a single work by him, nor has he ever had a solo exhibition in Britain. Yet Marca-Relli made a unique contribution to art at mid-century and was often at the heart of its action. He deserves a better fate.
Born to a family of Italian immigrants in Boston in 1913, Corrado di Marcarelli (he changed his name in the 1950s) moved to New York in 1926. Like many of the future abstract expressionists, during the Great Depression Marca-Relli worked for the New Deal’s WPA agency — a federal campaign to sponsor public artworks — where he met Franz Kline.
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