Moving Violation. 1983.
Acrylic on canvas.
Signed "Cply" and dated in the image (bottom center). 171 x 141 cm (67.3 x 55.5 in). [CH].

• In this work, as in comparable works from 1983/84, Copley combines the unpainted, large-pored canvas with motifs of a Sunday drive and bucolic, idyllic picnics in the countryside - French pictorial elements inspired by his time in Paris (1951-1962) as well as erotically charged figure scenes in his characteristically bright, intense colors.
• Copley fills the oval image area with several pictorial dimensions and seemingly parallel stories as well as smaller, independent depictions within the overall composition.
• Just this spring, Galerie Max Hetzler showed works from this very series in the exhibition "William N. Copley. Autoeroticism (Paintings from 1984)" in Paris .
• With his unique artistic oeuvre, Copley achieved a symbiosis of American Pop Art and European Surrealism and had a lasting influence on post-war art in the United States and Europe.
• Works by the artist from the 1980s can be found in, among others, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art / Mumok in Vienna and the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden.

PROVENANCE: David Nolan Gallery, New York.
Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich (acquired from the above).
Galerie Kurt Schäfer, Berlin (gallery label on the stretcher).
Private collection Southern Germany.

EXHIBITION: William N. Copley, Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York, October 15 - November 19, 1983 (gallery label onthe stretcher).
Wohl: CPLY, Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chicago, January 6 - February 7, 1984.

"It's always been the most important image that I've ever had simply because to me, the car is the stationary center of the universe. You're stationary, and the world is moving around you – over you, under you, around you. […] I find I could say more with that image than almost anything I've tried."
William N. Copley, 1983, in: ex. cat. William N. Copley, Fondazione Prada, Milan 2016, p. 39.