A member of the National Academy of Design since 1978, he was president of the Society of American Graphic Artists (SAGA), which presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004.

At the Art Students League, he studied sculpture with Jose de Creeft and etching with Martin Lewis and Will Barnet.

[9] The first recorded exhibition of Koppelman's work was held in the Lounge Gallery of the Eighth Street Playhouse in 1942, and included drawings, paintings, and sculpture.

He worked as a radio weatherman during World War II, guiding ships through the rough waters of the English Channel, which was a critical part of the Invasion of Normandy.

He manned an anti-aircraft machine gun in the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach, and later, as staff sergeant, was awarded a Bronze Star.

Letters describing his wartime experience are in the Chaim and Dorothy Koppelman papers at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

[25] Blackburn credited Koppelman with saving the workshop when it faced financial difficulties in 1956, by transforming it into a seven-member artists cooperative with annual dues to keep its doors open.

[20] She and Chaim Koppelman, as print curator, were responsible for major print exhibitions which included the work of Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Alex Katz, Ad Reinhardt, Fay Lansner, John von Wicht, Leonard Baskin, Robert Conover, Will Barnet, Harold Krisel, Vincent Longo and others.

[29] After one-person shows at the Terrain, both Chaim and Dorothy Koppelman had work included in the 1962 exhibition "Recent Painting USA: The Figure" at the Museum of Modern Art.

[22] The Broome Street Workshop remained open more than forty years, and was used and cared for by various artists, including Michael DiCerbo, Sally Brody, Carl Shishido, Reynolds Tenezias, and others.

Koppelman was commissioned in 1968 to interview Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Anuszkiewicz, and Clayton Pond on the relevance of the Siegel Theory of Opposites to their work.

[20] The following year, essays by Dorothy and Chaim Koppelman appeared in the book, Aesthetic Realism: We Have Been There – Six Artists on the Siegel Theory of Opposites (New York: Definition Press, 1969).

[46] "Chaim Koppelman brings a totally new concept and technique to the field of graphic art," wrote critic and gallery director Sylvan Cole, Jr. "Siegel's Theory of Opposites has had a profound effect upon his work".

[8] Una Johnson, Curator Emeritus of Prints and Drawings at the Brooklyn Museum said, "He has harnessed his skills and his unblinking imagery to the troubled, often controversial problems of our times."

In 1976, he won a New York State CAPS (Creative Artists Public Service) Grant for a suite of lithographs titled Closeness and Clash in Couples and Domestic Life.

[2] In 1998, his charcoal drawing "The Dark Angels" won the Gladys Emerson Cook Award for general excellence from the National Academy.

[48] In 1992 Koppelman, Blackburn, and Barnet received a New York Artists Equity Award for their dedicated service to the printmaking community.

[2] His scholarly writing as an Aesthetic Realism consultant showing the relation of art and life includes considerations of the lives and works of sculptors Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Jacques Lipchitz; painters René Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico, Henri Matisse, Rembrandt, Fernand Léger, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Masaccio; and many American printmakers.

[51] His drawings illustrate Siegel's book, Damned Welcome: Aesthetic Realism Maxims (New York: Definition Press, 1972, 2011).

[53] These sketches and notes continued to the year 2000, and some volumes are among the Chaim and Dorothy Koppelman papers in the Archives of American Art collection of the Smithsonian Institution.

[54] Chaim Koppelman died on December 6, 2009, of natural causes at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, New York City.

[6] Titled Napoleon Entering New York: Chaim Koppelman and the Emperor, Works 1957–2007, it included paintings, pastels, drawings, collage, watercolors, intaglio etchings, linocuts, and many of the artist's notes on paper.

The exhibition also included selections from a lecture Siegel gave in 1951, Napoleon Bonaparte: or, Orderly Energy, which Koppelman had attended and which he credited with inspiring much of the work displayed.

"[57] In reviewing this exhibition, the Italian daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera described Koppelman as "one of the greatest American printmakers".