John Coplans 

Born in London, John Coplans (1920-2003) pursued one of the most singular trajectories in post-war art. Before establishing himself as a photographer in his sixties, he served as painter, curator, critic, writer and co-founder of Artforum, playing a pivotal role in shaping the discourse of contemporary art in Britain and the United States.

As curator and museum director, he championed artists including Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Richard Serra and James Turrell, while his editorial work expanded the boundaries of critical debate.

From the early 1980s onwards, Coplans devoted himself to photography, producing the monumental black-and-white self-portraits for which he is internationally renowned.

Through fragmented, large-scale views of his own body, reconfigured into isolated details and sculptural forms, he challenged idealised representations of masculinity and the enduring legacy of the classical tradition. These uncompromising images transformed the ageing body into a universal subject, foregrounding vulnerability, physical decline and the passage of time with an unflinching humanism.

His photographs entered the collections of institutions such as the MOMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Getty Museum, securing his place among the most influential figures in the history of photographic self-portraiture and establishing a body of work that continues to challenge cultural perceptions of ageing and the human form.

The solo exhibition at settantaventidue brings together a selection of Coplans' seminal photographic works alongside a rare group of Xerox-based pieces. Seldom exhibited, these experimental works reveal a lesser- known aspect of the artist's practice, extending his investigation of the body, reproduction and image-making