William N. Copley: Selected Writings

Kasmin is pleased to announce the release of William N. Copley: Selected Writings. Edited by Anthony Atlas, in cooperation with the William N. Copley Estate, and published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Selected Writings will be published on August 18, 2020. The book will be widely available in the U.S. via Artbook D.A.P. and associated booksellers, including at Kasmin’s 509 West 27th Street location.

Though best known for his radical work as a painter, which he pursued under the name CPLY, William N. Copley (1919–1996) was also a talented writer. The texts gathered in Selected Writings present an essential companion for readers interested in the extraordinary life, work, and milieu of this singular artist. Among Copley’s reflections on art and artists (from Man Ray to Joseph Cornell) is “Portrait of the Artist as Young Dealer,” a vividly humorous account of his brief tenure as a dealer in Surrealist art in 1940s Los Angeles. Included are key interviews and correspondence illuminating Copley’s own practice and a selection of his newspaper articles, reporting entertaining encounters in France with artists such as Picasso and Constantin Brancusi, originally published in the 1950s and reprinted now for the first time.

This book has been released alongside Copley's current solo exhibition at Kasmin, The New York Years, which is on view by appointment at 509 West 27th Street, New York. A comprehensive look at the evolution of the artist’s painting during three pivotal decades in New York City, the exhibition traces this central period through key paintings from multiple series and a corresponding presentation of photographic, publishing, and research materials drawn from the archives of the William N. Copley Estate. This is Kasmin’s sixth solo exhibition of the artist’s work since the gallery began representing the Estate in 2010.

Purchase Here

William Nelson Copley is currently included in the exhibition Americans in Paris: Artists Working in Postwar France, 1946-1962, on view at the Grey Art Museum, NYU in New York through July 2024. In 2023-24, Copley was the subject of a two-person exhibition See Yourself As Lovers See You: William N. Copley and Dorothy Iannone at the Philara Collection, Düsseldorf, which followed a solo exhibition at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Miami, in 2018-19. In 2016-17, a comprehensive survey of Copley’s work was mounted by The Menil Collection, Houston and the Fondazione Prada, Milan. His work has also been included in landmark group exhibitions including documenta 5 (1972); documenta 7 (1982); Pop Art USA, Oakland Art Museum, California (1963); “Bad” Painting, New Museum, New York (1978); and Westkunst, Museen der Stadt, Cologne (1981). Copley’s work is held in major institutional collections worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate, London; and Centre Pompidou, Paris, among many others.

Learn More