Biography

Born in 1926, Long Beach, USA, Ed Moses was a central figure of Post-War West Coast
movement, creating an eclectic body of work which engaged with the varying
possibilities of painterly abstraction. From monochromes and diagonal grids to gestural
works and vibrant expanses of saturated pigment, Moses has unveiled a continual process
of discovery within painterly abstraction.
Moses’ work explores his fascination with the mutability of concepts, transitional spaces
and processes. Referring to himself as a ‘mutator’, Moses took inspiration from various
sources, such as Buddhism, the open spaces of his Venice, California studio as well as what
he called, his daily ‘habit’ of painting. Moses challenged representational form and
experimented with graphite, acrylic and oils by working with unconventional tools, such as
mops, hoses and rubber scrapers. Innovative and experimental, Moses’ work is instrumental
in contemplating and pushing the possibilities of painterly abstraction.
Moses was among the first generation of artists to be shown at L.A.’s legendary Ferus
Gallery in 1957, where he formed the “Cool School” of artists — which included Ed Ruscha,
Robert Irwin, Larry Bell, Edward Kienholz, John Altoon, Ken Price and Billy Al Bengston. Since
then, his work has been exhibited worldwide with major retrospectives in MOCA Los
Angeles in 1996 and The University of California Irvine in 2014. Other prominent collections
include, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Hammer Museum, Corcoran Gallery of Art,
Whitney Museum of American art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The Museum
of Modern Art, New York.

Public collections

Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY

Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

Berkeley Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, CA

Butler Art Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH

Cincinnati Museum of Art, Cincinnati, OH

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Dartmouth College Gallery, Hanover, NH

Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO

CU Art Museum, University of Colorado Boulder, CO

Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC

Irvine Collection, Irvine, CA

Janss Foundation, Thousand Oaks, CA

Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe, NM

Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA

Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Miami, FL

Menil Foundation, Rice University Art Gallery Houston, TX

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Musee national d’art moderne – Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, CA

Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC

Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY

New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM

Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA

Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA

Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA

Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs, CA

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

Prudential Insurance Company, Newark, NJ

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA

Seattle Museum of Art, Seattle, WA

Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS

The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica, CA

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN

Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT

Exhibitions