In a career that spanned 7 decades, Ed Moses is known for his restless intensity and ever-evolving style and is considered one of the foremost postwar abstract expressionist painters on the west coast. Moses’ work is in most major museums in the United States and he had his retrospective exhibit in 1996 at the LA Contemporary Museum.

The following are excerpts from the art critic, poet, and curator John Yau’s essay for Ed Moses' Retrospective at The Museum of Contemporary Art, LA, 1996.

"Within the context of postwar West Coast art, Moses is the most innovative member of the generation of abstract artists to ascend to prominence after John McLaughlin (1898-1976), Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993), and Sam Francis (1923-1994) first gained recognition in the 1950’s. However, whereas McLaughlin, Diebenkorn, and Francis developed a mature signature style and/or compositional approach by which they and their work became canonized, Moses developed along a very different path, one with a far more radical outcome."

"Moses is a highly formalist and independent-minded artist. He would much rather make a “bad” painting than make a painting that fulfills an external definition of “good” art. He possesses three traits rarely seen in tandem among postwar American artists: he is simultaneously defiant, dogged, and restless. Unlike other preeminent abstract artists – one thinks of Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Mangold, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, and Robert Ryman – Moses cannot be characterized by his repeated use of a style, method, material, format, or color. However, an ongoing vision connects his widely disparate bodies of work, a vision that surfaces in the earliest works and becomes more poignant, articulate, and challenging as the artist matures."