Ed Moses

Biography

Ed Moses was born on April 9, 1926 in Long Beach, California. After serving as a surgical technician during World War II, Moses intended to become a doctor. He enrolled in Long Beach City College’s pre-med program, but dropped out, citing his inability to memorize the curriculum. On a whim, he took a life-changing class with artist Pedro Miller, who recognized the spark of untapped talent. Moses changed course and enrolled in UCLA’s MFA program. There he met artist Craig Kauffman who introduced him to the future Ferus Gallery owner Walter Hopps.

 

Moses had his first exhibition at Ferus Gallery in 1958 while still a graduate student at UCLA. It was at Ferus that Moses would become a member of the raucous group of artists known as the “Cool School”; a group that included Kauffman, Billy Al Bengston, Robert Irwin, Edward Kienholz, Ken Price, Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell, John Altoon and Wallace Berman—all of whom pushed the boundaries of Post-War art and shaped the nascent LA art scene at a time when almost none existed. 

 

A Buddhist practitioner since 1978, Moses worked 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.”

 

Ed Moses obsessively mined the possibilities of abstract painting for over 60 years, leaving an indelible mark on the contemporary art world. He was extraordinarily productive; even in his 90s he showed little signs of slowing down, painting daily as he had done for decades outdoors in his Venice studio.

His first museum shows were in 1976: a drawings show of works 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, 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 turned primarily to painting.  He was the subject of a major retrospective at MOCA Los Angeles in 1996, and in 2014 he showed at University of California Irvine where he had taught in the 70s. On the occasion of his 2015 LACMA exhibition of drawings from the 1960s and 70s organized by Leslie Jones, Director Michael Govan commented “Ed Moses has been central to the history of art making in Los Angeles for more than half a century." That exhibition included more than 40 drawings promised to the museum by the artist.

 

Moses’s work is included in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, The Hammer Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others.

Works
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Exhibitions
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Bibliography

ED MOSES 

1926 - 2018 

 

1985-1986   Instructor, California State University, Long Beach, CA 

1983               Instructor, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, New

                         York, NY 

1977                Instructor, California State College, Bakersfield, CA 

1975-1976     Instructor, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 

1968-1972     Instructor, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 

1958                University of California, Los Angeles, M.A. 

1955                University of California, Los Angeles, B.A. 

1926                Born in Long Beach, CA 

 

MUSEUM & PUBLIC COLLECTIONS 

Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY 

Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH  

Anderson Collection at Stanford University, Stanford, CA 

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL 

Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA 

Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica, CA 

Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH 

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA 

Cincinnati Museum of Art, Cincinnati, OH 

Corcoran Gallery Of Art, Washington, DC 

Dartmouth College Gallery, Hanover, NH 

Denver Museum of Art, Denver, CO 

Gelco Collection, Minneapolis, MN  

Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA 

Hereditary Disease Foundation, Los Angeles, CA 

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC 

The Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College Gallery, Hanover, NH 

Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA 

Irvine Collection, Irvine, CA 

Janss Foundation, Thousand Oaks, CA 

La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA 

Lannan Foundation, Chicago, IL 

Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA 

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA 

Los Angeles Times Collection, Los Angeles, CA 

Menil Foundation, Rice Museum, Houston, TX 

Musee National D’art Moderne – Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France 

Museum Of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA Museum Of Fine Arts, Houston, TX 

Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diega, CA 

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX 

Museum Of Modern Art, New York, NY 

Museum Of New Mexico, Santa Fe, NM 

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

New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM 

Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY 

Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, CA 

Oakland Museum of Art, Oakland, CA 

Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach CA 

Palm Springs Desert Museum, Oakland, CA 

Pasadena Art Museum (Norton Simon Museum of Art), Pasadena, CA 

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA 

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA 

Prudential Insurance Company, Newark, NJ 

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA 

Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA 

Spencer Museum of Art at the Univeristy of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 

University Art Museum, Berkeley, CA 

University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 

University of Miami, Miami, FL 

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN 

Frederick Weisman Foundation Collection, Los Angeles, CA 

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY 

Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA 

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT 

 

SELECT SOLO EXHIBITIONS 

2022           California Cool, JD Malat Gallery, London, UK 

 

2021            Whiplines, Waterfalls and Worms, JD Malat Gallery, London, UK 

                      GESTURE, Brian Gross Fine Art, San Francisco, CA 

 

2020           Saving The Best For Last, Telluride Gallery of Fine Art, Telluride, CO  

 

2019            Through the Looking Glass, William Turner Gallery, Santa Monica, CA

 

2018             Diamond Jim, albertz benda, New York, NY 

                       Last Grids, Brian Gross Fine Art, San Francisco, CA 

 

2016            Ed Moses: Painting as Process, curated by Barbara Rose, 

                                  albertz benda, New York, NY 

                        Ed Moses: First, Look at the Paintings. Then We’ll Shoot the

                                  Shit, Blain l Southern, London, UK 

 

2015             Ed Moses: Drawings from the 1960s and 1970s, Los Angeles

                                   County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA 

 

2014             Ed Moses: Cross-Section, University Art Gallery, UC Irvine, CA 

                        The Language of Paint: Selected Works, William Turner Gallery,

                                    Santa Monica, CA 

 

2013             Yesterday’s Tomorrow, Brian Gross Fine Art, San Francisco, CA 

                        Green/Bronze, Charlottle Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM 

                        A Stone Mirror Reversed, Leslie Sacks Contemporary,

                                    Santa Monica, CA 

                        Ed Moses, galleri s.e, Bergen, NO 

 

2012             New Works: The Crackle Paintings, Patrick Painter Inc.,

                                   Santa Monica, CA 

                       Ed Moses: Notions, Mark Borghi Fine Art, Bridgehampton, NY