This is the catalogue for Ed Ruscha's exhibition Los Angeles Apartments which will be held at the Kunstmuseum Basel from June till September 2013. In 1965, Ed Ruscha published Some Los Angeles Apartments, the third of his ongoing series of photographic books, and completed a group of ten related drawings that depict examples of the ubiquitous Southern California apartment building. The exhibition will show the preparatory studies for these drawings which were recently acquired by the Department of Prints and Drawings of the Kunstmuseum Basel. They are based directly on the photographs Ruscha made of the apartment buildings. Included also, are photographs from Ruscha's Gasoline Stations series of 1962, one of which served as a model for the painting of Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas of 1963. By immediately juxtaposing preparatory studies, drawings and photographs, Ruscha's working method is clearly highlighted and the significance of photography for his passage between abstraction and realism made evident. Ed Ruscha was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1937 and grew up in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, from 1941 to 1956.
He moved to Los Angeles, California, and attended Chouinard Art Institute from 1956 to 1960. His work has been exhibited internationally and is represented in major museums and private collections throughout the world. In 2001, Ruscha was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Letters as a member of the Department of Art. He was chosen by the U.S. Department of State to represent the United States at the 2005 Venice Biennale.