Ruscha

Ruscha left Oklahoma City in 1956 to study commercia art at the Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts) in Los Angeles. While his design courses focused on precision and balance, his fine art classes emphasized spontaneity and gesture. "They would say, 'Face the canvas and let it happen,"" Ruscha recalled. "But I'd always have to think up something first." The artist would ultimately merge these approaches, neatly ordering text, images, and found materials within painted compositions. A series of travels-a cross country hitchhiking trip in 1954 and a months-long European tour in 1961- sharpened his attention to signage, architecture, and everyday objects. Back in California, Ruscha began rendering single outsized words in impasto, accentuating the shape of letters with thick layers of paint. These "guttural utterances," as he called them, include onomatopoeic exclamations (like "oof" or "honk"), popular slang, and brand names. Sourced from comic strips and supermarket shelves, the artist's frequent references to consumer culture aligned him with the burgeoning Pop art movement.