Ed Moses (artist)


Ed Moses was an American artist based in Los Angeles and an innovative and central figure of postwar West Coast art.
Moses exhibited at the Ferus Gallery in 1957 along with other prominent artists, becoming widely known over the next five decades.

Background

Moses was born to Olivia Branco Alphosus Lemuel Moses on a ship travelling from Hawaii to San diego on April 9, 1926. The youngest of 3 children, Moses' brother George had died before he was born. When he was 10, his older brother Johnny died as a result of a defective heart valve.
Moses was home schooled, later enlisting in the U.S. Navy, where he served in the Navy Medical Corps as a scrub assistant. He subsequently enrolled in a pre-med program at Long Beach City College.
When he was not accepted into medical school, he enrolled in art classes with Pedro Miller, a graduate from the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1949, Moses left Long Beach City College, transferring to UCLA and subsequently the University of Oregon. He left school, worked odd jobs before re-enrolling at UCLA in 1953, where he became friends with Craig Kauffman and Walter Hopps. To complete his master's degree, Moses held his graduate show at the Ferus Gallery, rather than on his college campus.
In 1957, Moses moved to New York City, where he met Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko and Milton Resnick, before returning to California.
In 1959, Moses married Avilda Peters; and moved to the state of Virginia, followed by San Francisco and again to Los Angeles. In 1962, Moses' second son Andy Moses was born.
Moses died at his home in Venice, California, at the age of 91.

Career

Moses joined the art faculty in 1968 at the new University of California campus at Irvine. In 1980, Moses received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Moses began working with Peter Goulds at L.A. Louver. He remained with Goulds for the next 15 years.
In 1996, Moses' paintings were documented in a major retrospective exhibition at MOCA, Los Angeles.

Public collections