Ed Moses
Nambo Panel I & II
2001-05

About the Item

An abstract acrylic on canvas by Ed Moses. "Nambo Panel I & II" is a diptych executed in whites, creams, dark green and depicting geometric shapes with various dots, circles and corkscrews against a dark background by Post War artist Ed Moses. The size of this diptych is 164 x 126 in. Each canvas measures 80 x 60 & 84 x 66 in. Ed Moses has been a prominent figure in the Los Angeles art scene for almost 60 years. He first exhibited in 1949, and was part of the original group of artists from the Ferus Gallery in 1957. 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. 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. The artwork of Ed Moses has appeared in exhibitions around the world, and his pieces are included in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Menil Foundation, the Museum of Modern Art, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.

Creator:
Ed Moses (1926, American)
Creation Year:
2001-05
Dimensions:
Height: 164 in (416.56 cm)Width: 126 in (320.04 cm)
Medium:
Canvas,Acrylic
Movement & Style:
Post-War
Period:
Late 20th Century
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Palm Desert, CA
Reference Number:
Seller: 108621stDibs: LU931183793
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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.