Ed Ruscha: "Los Francisco San Angeles"

These softground etchings are a fantastic opportunity for a collector to acquire a quintessential Ed Ruscha. They have two of his most prominent themes—text and place. Ruscha concerned himself with the idea of place in his early works, which you can see in his gunpowder drawings and paintings of streets, as well as, in his other projects like, Twentysix Gasoline Stations, Every Building on the Sunset Strip and even his Nine Swimming Pools. Ruscha lived in Los Angeles and created several prints that focused solely on the sprawling city’s major streets; he also created a series of prints with just San Francisco streets. Working on the “Los Francisco San Angeles” series at Crown Point Press, Ruscha takes the idea of place, and combines it with the associative power of language to create a work of abstraction. Crossing iconic streets from Los Angeles and San Francisco creates a virtual place in the viewers’ minds.