Ed Moses (April 9, 1926 – January 17, 2018) was an American artist based in Los Angeles and a central figure of postwar West Coast art.
Moses first exhibited at the Ferus Gallery in 1957 and became widely known over the next five decades.
Early life and education
Moses was born in Long Beach, California to Olivia Branco and Alphonse Lemuel Moses on April 9, 1926.[1][3]
Moses enlisted in the U.S. Navy at age 17, serving in the Navy Medical Corps as a scrub assistant during World War II.[1][4] Moses subsequently enrolled in a pre-med program at Long Beach City College.[1][4] When he was not accepted into medical school, he enrolled in art classes with Pedro Miller, a graduate from the Art Institute of Chicago.[4] In 1949, he left Long Beach City College, transferring to UCLA and subsequently the University of Oregon. He left school, worked odd jobs before re-enrolling at UCLA in 1953, where he became friends with Craig Kauffman and Walter Hopps.[4][5][6] To complete his master's degree, Moses held his graduate show at the Ferus Gallery, rather than on his college campus.
Early on, Moses gained attention for his "Rose Drawings" based on a pattern he traced off an oilcloth tablecloth found in Mexico. He repeated the patterns until they became dense abstractions. One of these pieces is part of Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art's permanent collection.[8]
In 2016, the year he turned 90, Moses exhibited a new series of paintings based on a craquelure technique where he painted the canvas with either black or white, then adding a subsequent medium over the paint (which he kept "secret") and then smashing the canvas with his fist or elbow.[8]
