Portrait of Ed Kienholz
Gift of Kenneth Tyler 2002
Photographer: Malcolm LUBLINER

Ed Kienholz is famous, or indeed infamous, for the sardonic and often explicit installations that he created with his wife and collaborator, Nancy Reddin–Kienholz. Using found objects, the pair assembled confronting scenes that attacked the duplicity of post–war America’s social climate and forced the viewer to question their own moral standards. The scenes are uncompromising in their portrayal of sex, derisive in their treatment of war, and painfully honest in their depiction of human fragility.

A self–taught artist, Kienholz was born in Washington in 1927 and worked extensively in relief sculpture before shifting his focus to large assemblage in the 1960s. He created one such installation in the Gemini GEL car park in 1971. Five car stud depicts a racially motivated attack on a black man discovered drinking with a white woman in his pickup truck by six white men.

The pickup truck purchased for use in the installation had the name ‘Sawdy’ written on the door, and Kienholz used this name in two series of multiples created after the completion of the installation project. A series of car doors, through the window of which the Five car stud tableau can be seen, was created in 1971 and the National Gallery holds one of the edition of 50 doors in its collection. Kienholz also created a series of number plates based on that of the pickup; the work Souvenir licence plate for Sawdy is featured in the Kenneth Tyler Collection.
Emilie Owens

This chronology provides an overview of selected biographical information, major solo and group exhibitions held within the artist's own lifetime.
This chronology builds upon the biographical information published in Kienholz(Gateshead: Baltic, 2005); A retrospective: Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1996)
Compiled by Simeran Maxwell, 2007