William Copley (artist)

William " Bill" Nelson Copley ( born January 24, 1919 in New York City, New York, USA; † 7 May 1996 Key West, Florida) was an American painter. He is assigned to the style of Abstract Expressionism.

Life

William N. Copley completed training at the Philipps Academy and Yale University before he moved in 1942 to 1946 for war service in Africa and Italy.

In Beverly Hills, Calif., in 1947 he opened a gallery in which he exhibited works of painters like René Magritte and Max Ernst and offered for sale. However, the surrealist paintings were hardly buyer, so William N. Copley gave the gallery and started a career as a painter and art collector. In 1953 he founded, together with his second wife Noma Ratner the William and Noma Copley Foundation, which later became the name Cassandra Foundation received.

Copley's pictures in a variety of sizes with a variety of themes emerged in Paris, where he lived in the 1950s, as well as in New York, where he had returned in 1963. On the " Documenta 5 " (1972, in the Department of Individual mythologies ) and the " Documenta 7 " ( 1982) in Kassel were William N. Copley's works, which are almost all signed with the characteristic symbol " CPLY ", just to see how in numerous exhibitions in Germany, Austria, France, Holland and the USA. From 1992 to William N. Copley lived in Key West, Florida, where he died in 1996.

In the Frieder Burda Collection is an extensive body of work by the artist. 2012, Copley images from the collection, which had emerged in the years 1996 to 1998, shown at the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden -Baden.

Public collections

• Collection Falkenberg