Edward Ruscha - Position On The Art Market

Position On The Art Market

At the start of the seventies, Ruscha began showing his work with Leo Castelli in New York. Castelli paid him a stipend, only rarely able to sell anything. Only at an exhibition of Ruscha's spray-gun silhouette paintings at the Robert Miller Gallery, New York, in 1986 he sold out a show. He currently shows with the Gagosian Gallery in New York, Beverly Hills and London; John Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco; and Sprüth Magers in Berlin.

As early as 2002, the oil on canvas word painting Talk About Space (1963), a takeoff on the American billboard in which a single word is the subject, was expected to sell for $1.5 million to $2 million from a private European collection. It was eventually sold for $3.5 million at Christie's in New York, a record for the artist. In 2008, Eli Broad acquired Ruscha's "liquid word" painting Desire (1969) for $2.4 million at Sothebys, which back then was 40 percent under the $4 million low estimate.

Angry Because It’s Plaster, Not Milk from 1965, which had been shown at Ferus Gallery that year, was later sold by Halsey Minor to Gagosian Gallery for $3.2 million at Phillips de Pury & Company, New York, in 2010. From the same series, Strange Catch for a Fresh Water Fish (1965) made $4.1 million at Christie's New York in 2011.

Ruscha's classic prints, published as multiples, command up to $40,000 apiece.