Martín Ramírez

(Mexican, 1895–1963)

Martín Ramírez was a self-taught Mexican artist whose intricate drawings melded Catholic iconography and figures into surreal spaces. His idiosyncratic works were made on salvaged paper bags and postcards pieced together with a glue composed of saliva and potato starch. Born on January 30, 1895 in Tepatitlán, Mexico, he left his wife and children behind in 1925 to find work in California. After six years of working on the railroads, he like other laborers of the era lost his job during the Great Depression. Homeless and unable to explain his situation in English, he was taken to a medical facility by police where he was diagnosed with catatonic schizophrenia. He would spend the next 30 years in psychiatric facilities. In 1948, after moving from the Stockton State Hospital to the DeWitt State Hospital outside of Sacramento he began creating the works for which he is now remembered. It was a professor of art and psychology, Tarmo Pasto, who first took an interest in Ramírez’s work. Pasto later put on exhibitions of his work at colleges and sent 10 drawings to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1955. Despite efforts to bring the artist to public attention, he remained mostly unknown during his lifetime. The artist died of tuberculosis on February 17, 1963 in Auburn, CA. It was not until 1973, when the Chicago Imagists Gladys Nilsson and Jim Nutt organized a solo exhibition of Ramírez’s work at Phyllis Kind Gallery that he began to gain notoriety. In 2007, he was the subject of a retrospective show at the American Folk Art Museum in New York. The artist’s works are presently held in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the American Folk Art Museum in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, among others.