Collection: Ed Ruscha

Ed Ruscha (born 1937) is an American artist whose work since the early 1960s has engaged with language, typography, the American vernacular landscape and the visual culture of Los Angeles. His artist’s books — beginning with Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963) — were among the earliest and most influential works to use the book as an autonomous artistic form, applying the deadpan logic of documentary photography and commercial printing to subjects drawn from the American roadside. His paintings and works on paper place words and phrases against atmospheric grounds, treating language as image and image as language. Ruscha was associated with the Ferus Gallery network in Los Angeles and was included in 5 at Pace at Pace Gallery, New York, in 1965. His practice sits at the intersection of Pop art, conceptual art and a sustained engagement with the specific visual conditions of Southern California.