Acquired directly from the artist
San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Works of Ed Ruscha, March 25 – May 30, 1982, then traveled to New York, Whitney Museum of American Art (July 8 – September 5, 1982), Vancouver, Vancouver Art Gallery (October 4 – November 28, 1982), San Antonio, The San Antonio Museum of Art (December 27, 1982 – February 20, 1983), Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (March 17 – May 15, 1983)
D. Hickey & P. Plagens, The Works of Edward Ruscha, New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1982, p. 72 (illustrated)
R. Dean & E. Wright, Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonnéof the Paintings; Volume Two: 1971 – 1982, New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2005, p. 86-87 (illustrated)
American • 1937
Quintessentially American, Ed Ruscha is an L.A.-based artist whose art, like California itself, is both geographically rooted and a metaphor for an American state of mind. Ruscha is a deft creator of photography, film, painting, drawing, prints and artist books, whose works are simultaneously unexpected and familiar, both ironic and sincere.
His most iconic works are at turns poetic and deadpan, epigrammatic text with nods to advertising copy, juxtaposed with imagery that is either cinematic and sublime or seemingly wry documentary. Whether the subject is his iconic Standard Gas Station or the Hollywood Sign, a parking lot or highway, his works are a distillation of American idealism, echoing the expansive Western landscape and optimism unique to postwar America.
View More Works