The approximately 25 prints featured in this exhibition are recent additions to the Edward Ruscha Graphic Arts Archive, a signal body of work that was acquired by the Fine Arts Museums in 2000.

In 2005, Ed Ruscha (b.1937), an artist long associated with California and the western cultural landscape, completed A Particular Kind of Heaven (1983 – 2005), a commissioned painting for the new de Young museum. That same year he represented the United States at the 51st Venice Biennale. In both the de Young commission and the Biennale series, Ruscha revisited earlier work to create new paintings that chronicle change and obsolescence.

Ruscha has also recently worked with old and new themes at fine art printmaking workshops using etching, photogravure, digital media, and the Mixografia process. With this exciting array of techniques, he explores words as visual signs and introduces subjects such as the intersection of Los Angeles’ and San Francisco’s streets, terrain with excised language, and road maps as dimensional landscapes.