Edward Ruscha (born December 16, 1937 Omaha, Nebraska) is an American painter, lithographer, photographer, and filmmaker. His last name is pronounced "rew-SHAY".
Background
Though born in Nebraska, Ruscha lived some 15 years in Oklahoma City before moving to Los Angeles where he studied at the Chouinard Art Institute from 1956 through 1960. By the early 1960s he was well known for his paintings, collages, and photographs, and for his association with the Ferus Gallery group, which also included artists Robert Irwin, Edward Moses, Ken Price, and Edward Kienholz.
Work
He achieved recognition for paintings incorporating words and phrases and for his many photographic books, all influenced by the deadpan irreverence of the Pop Art movement.
In the 1980s, a more subtle motif began to appear, again in a series of drawings, some incorporating dried vegetable pigments: a mysterious patch of light cast by an unseen window that serves as background for phrases such as WONDER SICKNESS and 99% DEVIL, 1% ANGEL. By the 1990s, Ruscha was creating larger paintings of light projected into empty rooms, some with ironic titles such as An Exhibition of Gasoline Powered Engines (1993). In 2006, the Jeu de Paume in Paris hosted a major retrospective of his photographs.
Born and raised Catholic, Ruscha readily admits to the influence of religion in his work. He is also aware of the centuries-old tradition of religious imagery which light beams have been used to represent divine presence. But his work makes no claims for a particular moral position or spiritual attitude.
