About the artist
Ed Ruscha
Ed Ruscha is an American artist associated with the Pop Art movement. Born in 1937, he lives and works in California.
Ruscha is widely regarded as one of the world’s most important artists with a career spanning six decades from the early 1960s until the present day.
Ruscha became well known in the late 1950s when he began making small collages using images and words taken from everyday sources such as advertisements. This interest in the everyday led to him using the cityscape of his adopted hometown Los Angeles – a source of inspiration he has returned to again and again. Ruscha often combines images of the city with words and phrases from everyday language to communicate a particular urban experience. He also explores the banality of modern urban life and the barrage of mass media-fed images and information that confronts us daily.
Ed Ruscha's use of the imagery and techniques seen in commercial art such as advertising and his interest in popular culture and the everyday, connects him directly with Pop Art.