Ed Ruscha

Ed Ruscha oscillates between sign and substance, locating the sublime in landscapes both natural and artificial. Working in diverse media with humor and wit, he has brought words--as symbol, form, and material--to the forefront of painting. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1937, Ruscha spent his formative years in Oklahoma City. In 1956, he moved to Los Angeles, to attend the Chouinard Art Institute. After graduation he began to work for ad agencies, honing his skills in schematic design and...See more

Ed Ruscha oscillates between sign and substance, locating the sublime in landscapes both natural and artificial. Working in diverse media with humor and wit, he has brought words--as symbol, form, and material--to the forefront of painting. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1937, Ruscha spent his formative years in Oklahoma City. In 1956, he moved to Los Angeles, to attend the Chouinard Art Institute. After graduation he began to work for ad agencies, honing his skills in schematic design and considering questions of scale, abstraction, and viewpoint, which became critical to his painting and photography. He has created more than a dozen artist's books, including the twenty-five-foot long, accordion-folded Every Building on Sunset Strip (1966). His paintings of the 1960s explore the noise and fluidity of language. Since his first exhibition with Gagosian in 1993, Ruscha has had twenty-one solo exhibitions with the gallery. The first retrospective of his drawings was held in 2004 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Ruscha represented the United States at the 51 st Venice Biennale (2005). Ruscha continues to influence contemporary artists worldwide, his formal experimentations and clever use of the American vernacular evolving in form and meaning as technology and internet platforms alter the essence of human communication. See less