Artist

Martín Ramírez

born Jalisco, Mexico 1895-died Auburn, CA 1963
Also known as
  • Martin Ramirez
Born
Jalisco, Mexico
Died
Auburn, California, United States
Active in
  • Sacramento, California, United States
Biography

Ramírez left Mexico as a young man to seek employment in the United States. He worked for a short time with railway construction crews, but was soon unable to cope with the pressures of his new life in California and was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. Ramírez spent the remainder of his life in California mental hospitals. After 1940, while institutionalized at the DeWitt State Hospital near Sacramento, he assembled his memories on pieces of scrap paper, pasted together with improvised adhesives, and drew his precise, dense, and repetitive marks and shapes with scavenged pencils, crayons, and markers.

The art of Martin Ramírez presents a world of patterns and repetitions based on cultural iconography and personal, idiosyncratic symbols. In this drawing, [Untitled (Church), SAAM, 1986.65.192] the symmetrical structures of a Baroque church recall buildings undoubtedly familiar to him from his native Mexico. The towers, façade, central domes surmounted by crosses, and the roofed arcade are all common elements in Spanish Colonial and Mexican mission architecture. The dark, arched doorway recalls the tunnel imagery that Ramírez repeated in many of his approximately three hundred drawings.

Lynda Roscoe Hartigan Made with Passion: The Hemphill Folk Art Collection in the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990)

Works by this artist (4 items)

John Wilde, Wildeview, 1985, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Schmidt-Bingham Gallery, 1996.62, © 1985, John Wilde
Wildeview
Date1985
lithograph on paper
Not on view
John Wilde, 75 in 150 from the Wisconsin Sesquicentennial Portfolio, 2001, aquatint and dry-point with select hand-coloring on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Janet Ann Bond Sutter and Thomas Henry Sutter, 2008.10.1.14, © 2001, Andrew G. Balkin and Renee E.K. Balkin
75 in 150 from the Wisconsin Sesquicentennial Portfolio
Date2001
aquatint and dry-point with select hand-coloring on paper
Not on view
John Wilde, Hats #2, 1988, silverpoint on prepared paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by Elizabeth Stevens and Mrs. E. N. Vanderpoel, 1996.45
Hats #2
Date1988
silverpoint on prepared paper
Not on view

Exhibitions

Media - 1970.353.1-.116 - SAAM-1970.353.1-.116_9 - 127238
Galleries for Folk and Self-Taught Art
October 21, 2016January 31, 2030
SAAM’s collection of folk and self-taught art represents the powerful vision of America’s untrained and vernacular artists.

Related Books

Cover for the catalogue "We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection"
We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection
We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection traces the rise of self-taught artists in the twentieth century and examines how, despite wide-ranging societal, racial, and gender-based obstacles, their creativity and bold self-definition became major forces in American art. The exhibition features recent gifts to the museum from two generations of collectors, Margaret Z. Robson and her son Douglas O. Robson, and will be on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum July 1, 2022 through March 26, 2023.