Conrad Marca-Relli is born in 1913 in Boston, as Corrado di Marcarelli, son of Italian immigrants. When he is 13 years old, the family moves to New York. In 1930, he follows a year of art training through the Cooper Union. In the following years he teaches art through job creation projects. During the war years, he serves in the army.
After the war, Marca-Relli joins the so-called Downtown Group in Lower Manhattan, in which abstract expressionists such as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell (New York School) participate. In 1949 he is co-founder of The Club, a place where the Downtown Group can come together. He has his first solo exhibitions during this period.
In the 1950s, Marca-Relli teaches at the universities of Yale and California. In 1951 he marries Anita Gibson, and in 1953 he buys a house in New York. At that time he makes large abstract expressionist collages in bright colours, often with figurative elements. In the 1960s, he distances himself from the New York School and switches to a simpler style, with completely abstract compositions, consisting of organic forms, in shades such as ochre, beige and black. The collage remains his main medium, in which he now also applies wood, metal and plastics.
Later, Marca-Relli resides alternately in the United States and Europe, until he finally settles in Parma (Italy). There he dies, 87 years of age.
