Ed Ruscha

(American, b. 1937)

Biography

Initially trained as a commercial illustrator, Ruscha had an early interest in comic books, graphic design, typography and serial imagery that led him to produce a now landmark series of inexpensive, large-edition artist's books comprising black-and-white photographic essays on commonplace architecture and objects. In the early 1970s, he began focusing on traditional printmaking, which has remained a consistent and vital part of his artistic practice. Working in screenprint, lithography, etching, and sometimes utilizing unconventional organic substances instead of inks, Ruscha has completed more than three hundred prints and some twenty artist's books to date.

Ruscha has been heavily influenced by the city of Los Angeles, incorporating text and urban motifs, as well as Western landscapes, into his work. Ruscha comments on myths of American Romanticism, commercial culture, urban life and the concept of the American Dream. The unusual media he can work in has included fruit and vegetable juices, blood, gunpowder, and grass stains. In the 1980s, his style became more mystical, as he worked with rays of light, constellations, and other celestial themes.

Ed Ruscha has held several retrospectives in New York, Washington, D.C., London, Paris, and Munich and he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001. The artist’s works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C, Tate Gallery in London, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.