Marca-Relli. Tra Figura e Astrazione. From Figure To Abstraction

It has been exactly twelve years since the first exhibition dedicated to Conrad Marca-Relli at the Galleria Open Art of Prato. Entitled Tensioni Composte and curated by Bruno Corà, it showed a nucleus of works exploring the American artist's research from 1939 to 1997, from his first figurative experiments to his definitive move to Italy and the opening of the Archive.
When introducing his reading of this fundamental parabola, referring directly to the voice of the artist, Corà immediately reveals one of the core elements of Marca-Relli's art: the constant presence of a series of antinomies and dualisms, and the balance that the artist always succeeded in finding to cope with these bipolar states, researched in an experimental key in his practice of art and painting.
The reconstruction of an atlas of the relationships among three such artists as Burri, Afro and Marca-Relli, drawn primarily from primary sources and direct testimony, is once again transversal, geographically and from the point of view of criticism. It is evident that this picture fits comfortably into a more complex system of relationships between Europe and the U.S. for the formation of the post-war New York art scene. It was Donald Judd who in a review stressed how important it was for this artist to experiment and to research new directions: 'he deserves credit for moving'.