American
Born in 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska, Edward Ruscha moved to Oklahoma City in 1941 and to Los Angeles in 1956 to attend the Chouinard Art Institute. He had his first solo exhibition in 1963 at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. At the start of the seventies, Ruscha began showing his work with the Leo Castelli in New York. He currently shows with the Gagosian Gallery in New York, Beverly Hills and London.
Ruscha has consistently combined the cityscape of Los Angeles with vernacular language to communicate a particular urban experience. Encompassing photography, drawing, painting, and artist books, Ruscha's work holds the mirror up to the banality of urban life and give order to the barrage of mass media-fed images and information that confront us daily. Ruscha's early career as a graphic artist continues to strongly influence his aesthetic and thematic approach.
Ruscha has been the subject of numerous museum retrospectives, which have traveled worldwide, beginning in 1983 with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1989, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 2000. In 2001, Ruscha was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters as a member of the Department of Art. The following year a major exhibition of Ruscha's entire body of work opened in Spain at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia.
"Leave Any Information at the Signal," a volume of Ruscha's writings, was published by MIT Press in 2002, while the first comprehensive monograph on the artist was written by Richard Marshall in 2003.
In 2004, The Whitney Museum of American Art organized two simultaneous exhibitions: "Cotton Puffs, Q-tips®, Smoke and Mirrors: The Drawings of Ed Ruscha," which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and then to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and "Ed Ruscha and Photography." Also in 2004, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney mounted a selection of the artist's photographs, paintings, books and drawings that traveled to the Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo, Rome and to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Another exhibition of Ruscha's photographs is being organized for the Jeu de Paume in Paris in 2006. Ruscha was the United States representative at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005.
Solo Exhibitons
2006 Two Artists ~ Two Worlds, the Drawings of Ed Ruscha and Robert Williams, Mendenhall Sobieski Gallery, Pasadena, California
2004 Ed Ruscha: The Drawings and Photographs, New York, Whitney museum
Ed Ruscha: Cotton Puffs, Q Tips, Smoke and Mirrors, L.A Museum of Contemporary Art
2003 Ed Ruscha Photographs, L.A Gagosian Gallery
2002 Ed Ruscha: Recent works on Paper, Leo Castelli Gallery
Ed Ruscha:Palindrome Paintings, Gagosian Gallery, New York
2000 Ed Ruscha: Mountains and Highways. Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London
Ed Ruscha: Powders, Pressures and Other Drawings, John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco
Ed Ruscha, Gallery Stadtpark, Krems
1999 Edward Ruscha: The Complete Editions 1959-1999. Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Travelling to Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa (2000-01)
Ed Ruscha: Metro Plots, Gagosian Gallery, New York
Ed Ruscha. Kukje Gallery, Seoul
Ed Ruscha. Meta Gallery, Madrid
1998 Ed Ruscha. Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London
1997 Spaghetti Westerns. Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
1997 Edward Ruscha. Jurgen Becker, Hamburg, Germany
Edward Ruscha: Cityscapes/O Books. Leo Castelli, New York. Catalogue
1996 Edward Ruscha. Gallery Seomi, Seoul, Korea
1995 Anamorphic Paintings. Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
The End. Close Range Gallery, Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado
1993 Edward Ruscha/Romance With Liquids. Gagosian Gallery, New York. Catalogue
1992 Edward Ruscha/New Paintings & Drawings. Galerie Thaddeus Ropac, Salzburg, Austria. Catalogue
Ed Ruscha/Stains. Robert Miller Gallery, New York. Catalogue
Edward Ruscha and Dennis Hopper/New Works. Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York
1990 Edward Ruscha. Galerie Ghislaine Hussenot, Paris
Edward Ruscha/Obra Sobre Paper. Galeria Joan Prats, Barcelona,Spain
Edward Ruscha. Centre Cultural de la Fundació Caixa de Pensions, Barcelona, Spain
Edward Ruscha. Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Nebraska. Catalogue
Ed Ruscha/new paintings and drawings. Karsten Schubert, London
Edward Ruscha Paintings and Drawings, Texas Gallery, Houston Texas
Ed Ruscha/Paintings. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles Apartments. Whitney Museum of American Art, NewYork, New York. Catalogue
Edward Ruscha. Galeria Trisorio, Napoli, Italy
1989 Edward Ruscha. Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou. Travelled to Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Fundacio Caixa de Pensions, Barcelona, Spain; Serpentine Gallery, London, England; Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles. Catalogue
New Paintings. Leo Castelli, New York
New Paintings and Drawings, Touko Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan. Catalogue
1988 Words Without Thoughts Never to Heaven Go. Lannan Museum, Lake Worth, Florida. Travelled to: Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts. Catalogue
Changing Group Exhibition. Karsten Schubert Gallery, London
Early Paintings. Shafrizi Gallery, New York. Catalogue
Edward Ruscha: Recent Paintings. Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois
Edward Ruscha: Recent Works on Paper 1988. Karsten Schubert Gallery, London, England. Catalogue
Institute of Contemporary Art, Nagoya, Japan. Catalogue
Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
1987 Edward Ruscha: 35 Lunette Paintings Commissioned by the Metro- Dade Art in Public Places Trust for Miami
Dade Public Library. Leo Castelli Gallery, Greene Street, New York, Miami
New Paintings Robert Miller Gallery, New York.
The Works of Ed Ruscha. Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas
1986 The Texas Gallery, Houston, Texas
4 x 6 Westfalischer Kunstverein, Münster, West Germany. Catalogue
New Paintings. Fuller Goldeen Gallery, San Francisco
Galerie Susan Wyss, Zürich, Switzerland
New Paintings. Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
1985 Ed Ruscha: Quelques Dessins. Galerie Gilbert Brownstone, Paris
New Paintings. James Corcoran Gallery, Los Angeles
Octobre des Arts. Musee St. Pierre, Lyon, France. Catalogue
1984 New Paintings. Leo Castelli Gallery, New York City, New York
1983 New Drawings. Bernard Jacobson Gallery, Los Angeles
1982 Edward Ruscha/New Drawings. Castelli Uptown, New York. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
Retrospective, The Works of Edward Ruscha. Travelled to: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada. San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles
1981 Ace Gallery, Vancouver, Canada
Edward Ruscha/New Works. Arco Center for the Visual Art, Los Angeles, California. Catalogue
1981 Edward Ruscha/D Drawings. Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
1980 Edward Ruscha:Paintings. Ace Gallery, Venice, California
1980 Nigel Greenwood, Inc., London
1980 New Paintings. Leo Castelli Gallery, New York