William N. Copley

was born in 1919 in New York. His art is based on the traditions of Dada and Surrealism as well as American Pop Art. Copley studied at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts and at Yale University. 

After returning from war, Copley opened his own gallery in Los Angeles at the age of twenty eight. He managed to attract the main protagonists of Surrealism to his exhibitions, including the European artists René Magritte, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy and Roberto Matta and the Americans Joseph Cornell and Man Ray. William Copley did not begin painting himself until the late 1940s. In 1951 he went to Paris with Man Ray, where he lived in Surrealist circles for around thirteen years. During these years, the artist painted numerous humorous and ironic pictures dealing with the Surrealist traditions. 

In 1953 William Copley founded the William and Noma Copley Foundation, later known as the Casandra Foundation, which gave small grants to artists. The foundation also handed over Marcel Duchamp's last work Étant Donnés, to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Copley had been one of the few people to see it before then; Duchamp had worked on it in secret for 20 years. 

Copley's  return to New York in 1961 brought about a change in his work. In the mid-1960s Copley increasingly depicted everyday American myths such as the Western Saloon, trivial motifs, such as pin-up girls, which he combined with publically accepted symbols to create subtle irony. The extent of his recognition was reflected by invitations to documenta 5 and 7 in 1972 and 1982.
In 1980 Copley moved to Roxbury, Connecticut, followed by a further move to Key West, Florida, where he dies in 1996. William N. Copley is regarded as a late Surrealist and precursor of Pop Art.