Ed Ruscha (b. 1937) is a notable figure in the Pop Art movement, most known for his colleges and text-based works. As a multifaceted artist, Ruscha's paintings, drawings, and films are deeply influenced by Los Angeles and his early interest in graphic arts. Through his integration of text and depictions of urban and Western landscapes, Ruscha offers a satirical and ironic commentary on American Romanticism, commercial culture, and city life. He often employs unconventional materials like fruit and vegetable juices, blood, gunpowder, and grass stains, as seen in his Stains series. Ruscha was born in Omaha, Nebraska and raised in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. After finishing high school, he moved to Los Angeles and studied at the Chouinard Art Institute, where he trained as a commercial illustrator, painting in the style of Franz Kline and Willem de Koonig. However, Jasper Johns's approach of using readymade images to support abstract concepts led Ruscha to explore how he could use graphics to highlight painting's dual nature as both a physical object and an illusion.

Ruscha has held significant solo exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. He was also the focus of major retrospectives at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Additionally, Ruscha represented the United States at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005. His works are also featured in various prestigious international collections, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, The Broad in Los Angeles, the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, the Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo (MAXXI) in Rome, and the Tate in London.