CPLY: Reflection on a Past Life

A small exhibition catalogue from 1979 in which the American painter William N. Copley, who signed his work CPLY, reviews his own career.

The show, held at the Rice Museum in Houston from 7 September to 11 November 1979, paired Copley's recent mirror pieces with earlier paintings and drawings drawn from Houston collections. The 39-page paperback was issued by the Institute for the Arts at Rice University and includes a works list and a lengthy essay in English by the artist. The cover reproduces a painting of a woman in a fencing mask and gloves holding a sword against a red ground.

Copley (1919-1996) was a painter, gallerist and patron. He opened the Copley Galleries in Beverly Hills in 1948, showing Magritte, Ernst, Tanguy and Man Ray, and later founded the SMS portfolios. His own work of the 1950s and 1960s mixed pin-up imagery, Western saloons and flags, and in 1974 he showed erotic work in New York as CPLY X-Rated.