Rucha's first paintings as an exhibiting artist combined letterforms with familiar objects and elements of the Western landscape. They were rendered in a flat, commercial style that immediately placed him in the forefront of 1960's pop art. The suggestion by art collector Audrey Sabol in 1966 that one of those early paintings, Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas (1963), would make a good image for a print that she would publish, formally introduced Rucha to the world of collaborative printmaking. Hollywood (1968), of of his most famous prints from this early period, had no painted antecedent and served as the inspiration for a 1977 painting and drawing.