East Hampton - An exhibition of 11 paintings and collages created during Conrad Marca-Relli's four-year residence in Springs will open at the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center on Thursday, May 5, 2011. The selection includes the major collage, "Death of Jackson Pollock," which references his friend's fatal automobile accident on August 11, 1956.

There will be a reception and gallery talk by Magdalena Dabrowski, Special Consultant in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Department of 19th Century, Modern and Contemporary Art, on Sunday, June 26 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

In his autobiographical essay, "I remember when...," published posthumously in 2008, Conrad Marca-Relli (1913-2000) recalled his introduction to the Springs cottage at 856 Fireplace Road, next door to Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner's property. "In 1953 my wife [Anita] and I moved to East Hampton," he wrote. "I felt that moving away from the city would give me the peace necessary to pursue my work without too many interruptions." This had also been Pollock's rationale for moving to Springs - a hamlet in the Town of East Hampton - in 1945. For both artists, country living had a highly favorable, perhaps even decisive, influence on their work.

The house required a lot of renovation, much of which Marca-Relli and his wife did themselves. "Jackson and Lee were most warm and helpful," he remembered. "They would constantly ask us over for dinner when they saw us in the middle of such exhausting work." After they settled in, Marca-Relli said, "I was deeply involved in my painting. Especially in the winter, there was a poetic quietness." At this time he was preoccupied with collage, which became his signature medium. Often taking the human figure as a point of departure, he would assemble and reassemble cut and torn fragments to create imagery that emphasizes organic unity rather than literal figuration. "Collage allows me to achieve purity of action," he explained. The process of adding, removing, reshaping and shifting the collage elements, he believed, enabled him "to meditate and to act simultaneously, which is something the paintbrush technique does not allow you to do."

Using a small outbuilding as his studio, Marca-Relli enjoyed a period of intense productivity, as well as a deepening friendship with Pollock and Krasner. During these years several other artists bought property in the area. By 1956, the Springs art community had grown to include Ibram Lassaw, Nicolas Carone, Sheridan Lord and Cile Downs, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Wilfrid Zogbaum, and Julian Levy. In August of that year, Pollock was killed in an automobile accident about a mile from home, and Marca-Relli was called to the scene to identify the body. As he described it: "He was flat on his back, his eyes open. There was no blood, no scars, in fact he looked so peaceful." The artist memorialized his experience in "Death of Jackson Pollock," in which the suggestion of a prone figure is constructed of collaged fragments that simultaneously cohere and separate. Shards of spattered paper ambiguously suggest details of Pollock's poured paintings.

The works are exhibited in association with Archivio Marca-Relli in Parma, Italy, and Knoedler & Company, New York, where a concurrent exhibition, "Conrad Marca-Relli: City to Town," will be on view from May 5 to July 29. Dual catalogs with essays by Carter Ratcliff are available.

The National Historic Landmark site, at 830 Springs-Fireplace Road in East Hampton, will re-open for guided tours on Thursday, May 5. Information on hours and admission prices is available at www.pkhouse.org.

School groups and coach tours may be accommodated in the off-season, weather permitting. The Study Center's art reference library and archives are open to scholars, students and other researchers by appointment year-round. Call 631-324-4929 to make arrangements.