Ed Moses
Many Feet
2017

About the Item

Ed Moses has been a prominent figure in the Los Angeles art scene for almost six decades. Born in 1926 in Long Beach, CA, Moses studied art at UCLA, and trained under the expressionist painter, Rico Lebrun. He first exhibited work in 1949, and was part of the original group of artists from the legendary Ferus Gallery in 1957. The Ferus Gallery was founded by artist Edward Kienholz and curator Walter Hopps - it was the first gallery on the west coast to devote a solo show to Andy Warhol. Ferus Gallery marked Los Angeles as a major contender in the international art scene, promoting LA-unique movements, such as Light and Space and Finish Fetish. Moses had his first solo exhibition at Ferus Gallery in 1958. Moses’ career was the subject of a major retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 1996, and his art was featured in the Pompidou Center’s survey exhibition ''Los Angeles: Birth of an Artistic Capital, 1955-1985'' in Paris. In 2015, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art mounted a solo exhibition of his works on paper from the 1960 and 70s. Always working with process and experimenting with materials as a painter, Moses has been critically lauded for his bold composition and innovation. At over 80 years old, he remains a prolific fixture of the Los Angeles art scene, and is respected for his inventiveness as an artist and his attentiveness to new developments in contemporary art.

Creator:
Ed Moses (1926, American)
Creation Year:
2017
Dimensions:
Height: 86.5 in (219.71 cm)Width: 73.5 in (186.69 cm)Depth: 1.5 in (3.81 cm)
Medium:
Canvas,Acrylic
Movement & Style:
Abstract
Period:
2010-
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Santa Monica, CA
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU4781779473
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Ed Moses

Ed Moses was a prominent figure in the Los Angeles art scene and key promoter of Post-War, West Coast art for almost 60 years. Best known for his eclectic range, his canvases are formal abstractions that use a variety of processes to experiment with surface—creating striations, cracks, marks and blurs at times juxtaposed with hard-edge geometric abstraction. Following graduation, Moses moved to New York City where he became friends with Franz Kline, Milton Resnick, William de Kooning, and Mark Rothko, with whom he would exhibit in New York, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. In 1959, Moses married Avilda Peters and moved back to Los Angeles to start a family, travel, and continue his painting career. Always working with process and experimenting with materials as a painter, Moses was critically lauded for his bold composition and innovation. In 1968, he received a Tamarind Lithography Fellowship as well as the offer of a teaching position at the University of California, Los Angeles, his alma mater, where he would teach until 1972. After travels in Europe, he would return to UCLA to teach until 1976, the same year he was recognized with a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Grant and his first museum shows: a show of drawings from 1958-1970s at the Wight Gallery at UCLA, and a show of new abstract and cubist red paintings at LACMA curated by Stephanie Barron, the latter marking a transitional moment in his career. While drawing was prominent in his work in the 1960s and early 70s, by the mid-70s, Moses was turning increasingly to painting. By 1990, Moses—a spiritual descendant of the Abstract Expressionists and a dedicated student of Buddhism—was living in Venice, California, meditating daily and blazing his own trail to aesthetic truth. Working with unconventional materials and tools, including mops, hoses, and rubber scrapers, he painted behind his house in Venice, where he lived for more than 30 years. Here, influenced by the tenants of Buddhism, he was working in the moment, embracing and responding to elements of chance and circumstance. Endlessly intrigued with the metaphysical power of painting, he created works that embraced temporality, process, and presence, remarking that “the point is not to be in control, but to be in tune.” Moses’ works are held in the permanent collections of the Albright-Knox Gallery, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Berkeley Art Museum at UC Berkeley; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Dallas Museum of Art, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Cincinnati Museum of Art; Butler Art Institute of American Art, Ohio; Dallas Museum of Art; National Gallery of Art; Musee National d’art moderne – Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, FR; and many others.