This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Painter William Nelson Copley (1919-1996), more popularly known by the contraction of his name CPLY, was born in New York City. He was adopted by newspaper publisher Colonel Ira C. Copley, who owned newspapers throughout Chicago and Southern California, thus assuring a lifetime of financial independence.
Copley studied at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts from 1932-1936, and Yale University from 1936-1938. In the U.S. Army from 1942-1946, during World War II, he fought throughout Italy and North Africa.
In 1947-1948, he was Director of Copley Galleries in Beverly Hills, Calif. in partnership with his brother-in-law John Ployardt, where he exhibited Surrealists Rene Magritte, Joseph Cornell, Matta, Yves Tanguy, Man Ray and Max Ernst. The gallery failed. When it closed, Copley's careers as a collector and artist began.
The artist was self-taught, not starting to paint until he was 28 years old. He worked in a pseudo-naif style that, to a certain extent, prefigured Pop Art. From 1951 to 1964, he lived in Paris and associated with Surrealist Max Ernst and Dadaists Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp.
Copley, in 1954, organized and directed the non-profit Copley Foundation to aid artists of his liking, which he continued to do until 1966, when he became dissatisfied with the way it was being run.
In 1955, Copley filed a lawsuit in Chicago seeking liquidation of the Copley estate, worth millions of dollars, receiving, in 1959, payments according to the settlement. By 1961, the IRS was questioning his studio tax deductions and his status as a serious artist
In New York City, where he lived and worked from 1964 to 1979, he began describing the ordinary world with humorous, comic-strip, sketchy figures and blots of color. He worked with mixed-media, and often featured material used as camouflage, such as curtains, veils and masks. He has shown work in exhibitions of Surrealism, Pop Art, assemblages and erotica.
In 1979, Copley sold the majority of Surrealist works from his collection at Sotheby's on November 5th, as he would similarly do in 1993, when he sold the contemporary works from his collection at Christie's, November 8th of that year.
The artist lived and worked in Roxbury, Connecticut from 1980-1991, as he did for the remainder of his life in Key West, Florida, from 1992 until his death in May 1996.
His work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum and Museum of Modern Art, New York City.
William Nelson Copley (CPLY) exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, as well as the following one-man exhibitions:
2000
"Copley Collects CPLY", Phyllis Kind Gallery,
New York
1999
Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich
L.A.C., Lieu d'Art Contemporain, Sigean, France
1998
Galerie Lelong, Zurich
Galerie Onrust, Amsterdam
Nolan/Eckman Gallery, New York
1997
Ulmer Museum, Ulm
Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich
1996
Nolan/Eckman Gallery, New York, NY
1995
Kestner-Gesellshaft, Hamburg (Retrospective)
Galerie Lelong, Zurich
1994
Nolan/Eckman Gallery, New York, NY
1993
Galerie Zell am See, Schloss Rosenberg, Austria
Haus Am Lutzowplatz, Berlin Germany
1991
David Nolan Gallery, New York
Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich
Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York and Chicago
1990
Galerie Klewan, Munich, Germany
Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chicago
1988
Galerie 1900/2000, Paris
1987
Kewenig Galerie, Frechen-bachem, Germany
Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York
Source:
Les Krantz, "American Artists, Illustrated Survey of Leading Contemporary Artists"
http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/special_collections/copley1_m5.html
http://www.phylliskindgallery.com/artists/cply/bio.html
Copley Foundation
The William and Noma Copley Foundation was incorporated in Chicago as a non-profit foundation in 1954. Its aim was to aid and encourage creative individuals in the fields of painting, sculpture and music composition. Grants were awarded by a board of directors from nominations made by the advisers. The Foundation's advisers were Jean Arp, Alfred Barr, Jr., Roberto Matta Echaurren, Max Ernst, Julien Levy, William Lieberman, Man Ray, Sir Roland Penrose and Sir Herbert Read. The officers and directors were William Copley, Noma Copley, Marcel Duchamp, Barnet Hodes (also called Barney), Eleanor Hodes and Darius Milhaud. Music and art award responsibilities were divided between husband and wife. Noma Copley collaborated with Milhaud, whose music recommendations were nearly all accepted. William Copley generally made the final decisions on the visual art grants, based on the recommendations of his artist friends. In 1966 William Copley became dissatisfied with his Foundation association, preferring to be known as a painter rather than a philanthropist.
The Foundation published a series of monographs from 1960-1966 to highlight those artists who received awards. The British Pop artist Richard Hamilton was chosen as editor, not only for his well-known talents in layout and design, but also, as one of Duchamp's protegées, for the respect given him by the international art community. A total of 10 monographs were published on Hans Bellmer, Richard Lindner, Bernard Pfriem, René Magritte, Thomas Albert Sills, Eduardo Paolozzi, James Metcalf, Serge Charchoune, Jacques Hérold and Diter Rot [i.e., Dieter Roth]. The later books, especially Dieter Rot's, explored the medium of the artist book, which Hamilton found very exciting. He suggested that the Foundation continue in this direction and consider publishing books by non-awardees (such as Emmett Williams). However, William Copley believed the series was straying from the Foundation's initial intentions, which could jeopardize the Foundation's non-profit tax status.
Copley Collection
The Copleys assembled an important private collection of Surrealist art. Hans Bellmer, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, René Magritte and Man Ray were represented in depth. Important works in the collection were acquired abroad and imported into France. Approximately half of the collection was purchased in France. The collection included Magritte's Ceci n'est pas une pipe and Chambre d'Ecoute, Ernst's Le Surréalisme et la Peinture, Man Ray's A l'Heure de l'Observatoire: les Amoureux and Richard Hamilton's $he. From 1964 to 1966, Marcia Tucker worked as collection curator, overseeing exhibition loans and the care and maintenance of the collection. Most of the Copley collection was sold at auction (Sotheby's Nov. 5, 1979). Some of the works were placed on long-term loan or donated to museums.
Source:
http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/special_collections/copley1_m5.html
(For definitions of Surrealism and Copley Collection, see AskART Glossary at http://www.askart.com/AskART/lists/Art_Definition.aspx)
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Biography from Rogallery.com:
| Only after he opened his own gallery in California in 1947 did William Copley begin to paint for himself. Since then, his work has appeared in such museums as the Museum of Modern Art, N.Y.; Art Institute of Chicago, and the Tate Gallery in London. The magic in his work comes from his ability to capture his inventive imagination on canvas and the print medium. Copley's love for intricate and complicated design is evident in any one of his works. It is not unusual for him to blend stripes, polk-a-dots, plaids and checkers into a single, striking image. Born in New York in 1919 and educated at Yale University, Copley has emerged as primarily a surrealist.
Mr. Copley led a charmed life that included not only painting but also art dealing and collecting and philanthropy. Born in New York City in 1919, he was orphaned as an infant and adopted by Ira C. Copley, a newspaper tycoon who owned 16 newspapers in Chicago and San Diego. He attended Yale University and worked briefly as a reporter for The San Diego Tribune.
But a friend introduced Mr. Copley to Surrealist painting, and he became friendly with the colony of expatriate Surrealists then in Los Angeles, including Man Ray and Max Ernst. In 1947 he opened a gallery there to show their work, but closed it when nothing sold, his failure as a salesman of Surrealist art marking the start of his careers as a collector and artist. Over the years he amassed one of the world's most respected collections of Surrealist art, which included Man Ray's unforgettable image of large red lips floating above the landscape. The collection was sold at auction in 1979 for $6.7 million, at the time the highest total for the auction of a single owner's collection in the United States.
Mr. Copley spent most of the 50's and early 60's living and working in Paris, where his friendship with the Surrealists made him a welcome member of their movement. But the style he perfected was Surrealist only in its emphasis on uninhibited expressions of the libido. His cartoonish figures had affinities to Pop Art, which they presaged, and drew from American folk art.
In 1953, Mr. Copley and his second wife, Noma Ratner, founded the William and Noma Copley Foundation, later known as the Cassandra Foundation, which gave small grants to artists. The foundation also gave Marcel Duchamp's last work, Etant Donnes, to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Mr. Copley had been one of the few people to see it before then; Duchamp had worked on it in secret for 20 years.
EXHIBITIONS
1965 Surrealist exhibition, Paris
1963 Pop Art USA, Oakland Art Museum
1956 Salon de Mai Paris
1948 Los Angeles
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