A singular figure of post-war painting and an important linkage between European Surrealism and Pop art, American artist William Copley (1919-1996) became widely known for his humorous, cheekily erotic works. Artists like Andy Warhol, Christo, and Roy Lichtenstein were frequent visitors at Copley’s studio in New York City, a testament to the wide influence Copley enjoyed during his lifetime. His paintings and drawings during the 1950s and 1960s often engaged with American tropes such as cowboys, flags, and pin-up girls. 



Born in New York City in 1919, William Copley was adopted in 1921 by Ira Copley, the owner of sixteen newspaper companies in Chicago and San Diego, after his parents died in the 1919 Spanish Flu epidemic. After being drafted in the Second World War during his time at Yale, Copley experimented with politics upon returning home from the war, working as a reporter for his father’s newspaper. With the influence of his brother-in-law John Ployardt, an animator at Walt Disney Studios, Copley became immersed in Surrealism. Introduced to Marcel Duchamp in New York City through Man Ray, Copley initially became a dealer in Surrealist art in Los Angeles, opening The Copley Galleries with Ployardt in 1948. They presciently displayed works by René Magritte, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Roberto Matta, Joseph Cornell, and Man Ray, but closed their doors after its first year due to low sales, as Los Angeles had not yet caught on to Surrealist art as other cities such as New York had. 



Copley’s work is held in dozens of public collections worldwide, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Centre Pompidou, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Tate Collection, Menil Collection, Stedelijk Museum and many more.