Ed Ruscha was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1937. Ruscha moved permanently to Los Angeles where he attended the Chouinard Art Institute from 1956 to 1960. By the mid sixties, the artist had published his first photography book, Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations, and had completed a series of paintings that displayed with great precision a single word against a flatly lit background. Ruscha first solo exhibition was at the Ferus Gallery in 1963.

In 1971, Ruscha produced his first film entitled Premium soon and continued work on his textual paintings. Some works include such figurative and verbal symbols as egg yolk, blood, and gunpowder.

During the eighties, Ruscha executed a series of drawings incorporating vegetable pigment and depicting mysteriously cast light and phrases such as 99% DEVIL, 1% ANGEL. In 1985, Ruscha executed his first public commission, a mural for the Miami Dade Public Library that displays the phrase Words Without Thoughts Never to Heaven Go.

Since 1990, Ruscha has produced several larger works depicting empty rooms into which light projects. He has also experimented more recently with curved canvases. Ed Ruscha's work has been shown internationally for thirty years, and is permanently represented in many major museum collections.