Christie’s Seeks $50 Million for Ed Ruscha Gas-Station Painting

One of the outstanding paintings of post-war art and the last of Ruscha’s large-scale 1960s masterpieces in private hands, it comes to auction after featuring as one of the centerpieces of the artist’s retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2023-24.

Max Carter, Christie’s Vice Chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art, remarks, “Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half represents the synthesis and peak of Ruscha’s masterpieces of the early 1960s. It is an icon—of Ruscha’s art, of paradox, of the post-war era. Offering it this fall at Christie’s is once-in-a-lifetime.”

Ed Ruscha first encountered the Standard Oil gas stations during a road trip from his native Oklahoma to Los Angeles along Route 66 in 1962. Captivated by the boldness of their design against the vastness of American landscape, he began including them into what would become many of his most famous paintings. Just as Andy Warhol did with soup cans, Ruscha immortalized the gas station through seriality. The image has now become emblematic of the American West and the post-war art historical canon, memorialized in 1963 in Ruscha’s now legendary publication Twentysix Gasoline Stations.

Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half stands as an icon among this celebrated series. The work debuted the year it was created in a 1964 exhibition in Los Angeles’s famed Ferus Gallery, where it was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Donald Factor of Los Angeles. It has since remained privately held within esteemed collections, while simultaneously shared extensively. The painting has been cited throughout literature and exhibited publicly at leading institutions including The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Smithsonian Institute, The Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and most recently The Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Its sister painting, Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas, 1963 is held in the collection of the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College.

Main Image: Ed Ruscha (b. 1937) Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half, 65 x 121½ in (165.1 x 308.6 cm), Painted in 1964, Estimate on request; in excess of $50 million. © Christie's Images Ltd 2024.