WILLIAM N. COPLEY

20 October 2016 - 8 January 2017
Fondazione Prada | Milan, Italy

This exhibition constitutes the largest retrospective ever dedicated to American painter William N. Copley (1919-1996), with over 150 works gathered from international museums and collections all over the world.

Copley embodied the figure of the eclectic, self-taught artist, while tirelessly promoting culture through his work as a journalist, publisher, gallery owner and art collector. Influenced by Surrealism, American folk culture and cartoons, Copley employed humor and intelligence to explore themes that became recurrent in his production, including pornography, patriotism and the unexpected potential of everyday objects.

Audiences will also have the opportunity to admire a corpus of masterpieces by Max Ernst, René Magritte, Man Ray and Jean Tinguely, once part of Copley’s personal collection, today part of The Menil Collection (Houston, USA).