Ed Ruscha

Ed Ruscha was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1937. He moved to Los Angeles in 1956 to study at the Chouinard Art Institute, from which he graduated in 1960. He then quickly established himself as an important part of the Pop Art movement with graphic works that incorporated text, landscapes, and urban scenes from California. Ruscha’s art often comments on commercial culture and urban life with playful humor. In the 1960s, he began to extensively document major streets in Los Angeles through series of photographs; these photos were later published in book form. His vast artistic career can be seen as epitomizing both past and present Los Angeles. While he is often seen as a quintessential Southern California artist, his work has been the subject of major museum exhibitions locally, nationally, and abroad, including shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Musée National Jeu de Paume, Paris, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. LACMA’s collection alone includes over 300 works by Ruscha. Ruscha lives and works in Los Angeles. (From Paths and Edges exhibition, Guggenheim Gallery, August 2015)