William Nelson Copley   °1919 ^✝1996   (USA)

William Nelson Copley (b. 1919, New York, N.Y.; d. 1996, Sugarloaf Key, Fla.) was an American artist active in the postwar period through the late 20th century who is celebrated for his pioneering body of work that vividly explores humor, eroticism, and social critique. Primarily a painter, and proudly self-taught, Copley employed an anomalous figural style in works dealing with a range of provocative themes and subjects, including repeated forays into the realms of sex, politics, and autobiography. Deeply influenced by the work of the Surrealists, Copley pursued a poetic dimension in art, aiming to stimulate amusement, wonder and self-discovery—and he pursued these qualities when such concerns were out-of-step with the dominant artistic trends of his time. In an artist’s bio submitted to the Whitney Museum of American Art in the mid-1970s, Copley wrote, “My style, whatever it is, has to do with discovering myself.” In total, the artist’s visual corpus includes paintings, drawings, collages, sculptural objects, prints, artist’s books and multiples.

Parallel to his art practice, Copley was also a historically significant art collector, art patron, publisher and writer. With his second wife, Noma Copley (née Ratner), the artist used funds from an inheritance to found the William and Noma Copley Foundation in 1954 (later renamed the Cassandra Foundation). Its philanthropic activities included giving annual grants in visual arts and music; publishing a series of artists’ monographs; as well as purchasing and financing a gift of Marcel Duchamp’s Etant donnés to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 1968, Copley launched the Letter Edged in Black Press, Inc., which published the unclassifiable artists’ magazine S.M.S. The magazine ran for six issues, showcasing groundbreaking facsimile multiples in diverse media by new and established artists.