Bea,

1980

Coplans created pictures whose strength resides in their economy of means: his figures are tightly framed so as to heighten the tactility of their skin, the details of their forms, and the narrative of each gesture. Following a career in the British military, Coplans immersed himself in the arts community of London. However, he soon sensed that the center of the artistic avant-garde had shifted from Europe to the United States, and in 1960 he moved to California and began a career as an influential curator and arts writer, serving as a founding editor of Artforum. The artist’s third career, which he began at the age of sixty, was photography, and his studies of the expressive nature of the human form made a significant impact on the field.