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The Battle

1956
Not on view
By the early 1950s Marca-Relli developed a technique of abstract collage, attaching biomorphically-shaped pieces of painted or dyed canvas to the surfaces of his pictures. While his fellow Abstract Expressionists in the Club on Eighth Street generally avoided representative subject matter in their work, Marca-Relli often evoked the tradition of Renaissance painting. In this work, he paraphrases the fifteenth-century painter Paolo Uccello's famous scenes commemorating Florence's victory over Siena in the Battle of San Romano in 1432, deliberately using a canvas of the same dimensions as those of the three Renaissance panels now found in the Louvre, the Uffizi, and the National Gallery, London.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: The Battle
  • Artist: Conrad Marca-Relli (American, Boston, Massachusetts 1913–2000 Parma)
  • Date: 1956
  • Medium: Oil cloth, tinted canvas, enamel paint, and oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 71 1/8 in. × 131 3/16 in. × 1 1/4 in. (180.7 × 333.2 × 3.2 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1956
  • Object Number: 56.203
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

More Artwork

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Arras, Conrad Marca-Relli American, Painted canvas collage
Arras
Conrad Marca-Relli
1955
Yellow Collage, Conrad Marca-Relli American, Collage of pieces of fabric, mounted on canvas
Yellow Collage
Conrad Marca-Relli
1960
Villa Nueve, Conrad Marca-Relli American, Lithograph
Villa Nueve
Conrad Marca-Relli
1982
The Witnesses, Conrad Marca-Relli American, Painted and cut sections of oil on canvas mounted on canvas
The Witnesses
Conrad Marca-Relli
1956
Take Off, Helen Frankenthaler American, Oil and enamel on canvas
Take Off
Helen Frankenthaler
1956

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