Ed Ruscha was born 1937 in Ohama, Nebraska and moved to Los Angeles in 1956 to attend the Chouinard Art Institute. expansive oeuvre defies easy categorization, though it’s all infused with a kind of deadpan California cool. Since the 1960s, Ruscha has made photographic books, tongue-in-cheek photo collages, paintings, and drawings that demonstrate a keen interest in language and the idiosyncrasies of life in Los Angeles, In his most famous works, he places words and phrases from the colloquial and consumerist vernacular atop photographic images or fields of color—a strategy that situates him within a larger Pop art lineage. Ruscha often paints and draws with unusual materials such as gunpowder, blood, and Pepto Bismol, drawing attention to the deterioration of language and the pervasive clichés in American culture. The artist is one of the many faces of the Pop art movement, but his work also has antecedents in Dada, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism and would soon be central to Conceptual art. Ruscha’s work has been exhibited across the globe, and the artist has enjoyed solo shows at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Moderna Museet, in addition to the Venice Biennale, where he represented the United States in 2005. At auction, his work has sold for eight figures. Ruscha is currently represented by Gagosian Gallery. Pico and Sepulveda, 2001 by Ed Ruscha is a 16 inch by 25.75 inch screenprint that depicts the words “Sepulveda” and “Pico” along two intersecting lines. The screenprint uses various colors such as black, grey, white, and yellow on Rives BFK paper. Yellow dots are concentrated on the top third of the work and gradually fade into black towards the bottom.
In this work of art, Ruscha displays graphic simplicity, playful humor, and an interest in car culture. He is establishing a fresh generation of California art. Pico and Sepulveda centralizes past and present Los Angeles, it references not only a major intersection in LA’s urban sprawl, but also the clash of two early-California ranching Mexican dynasties; the highly influential Sepulvedas were a famous family of landowners, and Governor Pio Pico was the last Hispanic Governor of California under Mexican Rule. To a California native, the two names are easily recognizable from a map, music, art, and history.
