Martin ramirez artist

Mexican, 20th century. Born , Jalisco, Mexico; died , Auburn, California. Like many Mexican immigrants, he suffered great hardship, but his story is anything but typical. He began to draw in the s, using unlikely materials culled from hospital supplies. This oeuvre would have been lost if not for the advocacy Dr. Tarmo Pasto, a Sacramento psychiatrist who met the artist after his move to DeWitt.

Pasto offered him encouragement, some supplies, and later archived and exhibited his work. Patching together long, rectangular sheets of thin operating-table paper with mashed potatoes and spit, he drew with pencil, crayon, charcoal made from burned matchsticks.

Martín ramírez prints

He made paint by chewing on colored newsprint, then spitting it into homemade bowls of hardened oatmeal. His isolated figures and scenes are often dramatically framed by his signature proscenium device: lively gauchos from the Mexico of his youth, stately Madonnas, trains disappearing into underworld tunnels, animals, a lone figure seated in contemplation, possibly a self-portrait.

Onto more complex works, he layered collaged images from print sources. Recently discovered drawings made in the final years of his life reveal a bolder use of color, and riskier, more abstract compositions driven by his confident, undulating line. Anderson, Brooke D. Tuchman, Maurice and Carol S. Bowman, Russell, et al.