Ed Ruscha

Ed Ruscha (b. 1937, Omaha, Nebraska) is an American artist who has lived and worked in Los Angeles since 1956, when he moved there to study at the Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts). He works across painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, and artists' books, and has been central to the development of West Coast conceptual and Pop art.

His artists' books — Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963), Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966), Thirtyfour Parking Lots (1967), Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass (1968) — transformed the photobook into a deadpan documentary form that mapped the visual culture of Los Angeles with systematic dispassion. These books became foundational references for the artists' publication movement of the following decades. His paintings place words and phrases against atmospheric color-field grounds — sunsets, clouds, bodies of water — in compositions that exploit the tension between the neutrality of the lettering and the romanticism of the landscape, or set single words against the drama of a Los Angeles dusk. Major retrospectives have been held at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D.C.), the Tate Modern in London, and LACMA. His work is held by MoMA, the Whitney, the Centre Pompidou, and institutions across the world.