(New York 1919–1996 Key West, Florida)
Untitled, signed, dated cply 89, acrylic on canvas, 153 x 193 cm, on stretcher, (PP)

Provenance:
Nolan Eckman Gallery, New York
acquired there by the current owner –
Austrian Collection

[…] According to Man Ray, there was more real Surrealism flourishing in Hollywood in the late 1940s than the Surrealists themselves would have been able to invent. For Copley, this assessment proved to be true in a most painful manner: his Beverly Hills gallery which was to focus on Surrealist works failed miserably. But the protagonists chosen by him did not take long to discover the autodidactic painter’s talent and became the first collectors of his works. Copley himself became his best buyer, and he built up a legendary collection including several icons of art history. In 1951, Copley went to Paris together with Man Ray. He developed a very personal Pop Surrealism combining everyday scenes, American myths, pin-ups, as well as cartoon and film fragments. Copley remained an outsider whose popularity had always been subject to strong ups and downs: celebrated as an American Max Ernst for one short summer, then forgotten before being declared a part of Pop art, a world he was familiar with as a creative artist before the term even existed, and thenwritten off completely again. His works have been presented at the „documenta” twice, and famous museums have shown retrospectives of his work, last the Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hanover shortly before his death in 1996.
(Christine Kintisch)