MARTÍN RAMÍREZ ESTATE

Amidst political and religious upheaval, Martín Ramírez left his native Jalisco, Mexico for America in 1925. Seeking to support his family and struggling ranch, he labored as an impoverished immigrant until he was picked up by police in California in 1931, reportedly in a disoriented state. By 1932, Ramírez was declared schizophrenic (with varying diagnoses of catatonic, manic-depressive and paranoid amending that). He was committed first at Stockton State Hospital and eventually at DeWitt State Hospital in Auburn, California. During this internment and until his death in 1963, Ramírez’s fantastic drawings, formerly only found in the margins of his letters home, ranged up in scale.

Some of Martín Ramírez’s large paneled pieces stretch to nineteen feet. These drawings were all completed from within the walls of hospitals, on the floor underneath a table, and often on paper the artist carefully pieced together himself. With rhythmic repetition of line and gentle shading, Ramírez created imaginary landscapes populated by the real images of his past: the caballeros, Madonnas and animals of his Mexican heritage and the trains that carried him to permanent exile in America. His technical skill, stylistic evolution, and thematic coherence led Roberta Smith of the New York Times to call Ramírez “…simply one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.”

Martín Ramírez’s talents were recognized in small exhibitions as early as the 1950s. His work has been the subject of numerous museum shows, including the retrospective “Martín Ramírez: Pintor Mexicano,” at the Centro Cultural/Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City, in 1989, and two major exhibitions at the American Folk Art Museum, NYC: a traveling retrospective titled “Martín Ramírez” in 2007, and “Martín Ramírez: The Last Works” in 2009. In 2010, the 20th century master was the subject of a comprehensive exhibition curated by Brooke Davis Anderson at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reína Sofía, in Madrid, titled “Martín Ramírez: Reframing Confinement.”

During the 2007 exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum, a curator was contacted by a relative of Dr. Max Dunievitz, former medical director of DeWitt State Hospital. The Dunievitz family possessed dozens of Ramírez’s drawings that had been stored in their garage for over two decades. Subsequently verified, this group of 140 previously unknown works and the entire estate of Martín Ramírez are represented exclusively by the Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York.

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Time Out NY article by Anne Doran (November 2011).
New York Times gallery listings (November 2011)
Art in America article by Richard Kalina (October 2007)
Folk Art article by Brooke Davis Anderson (Fall 2008)
London Review of Books, article on outsider art by Terry Castle (7/28/11)
Fluence magazine article by Elenore Weber, March/April 2010
The Boston Globe ”Creating Worlds All Their Own” by Cate McQuaid (04/15/09)
The Week ”Where to Buy…Martin Ramirez” (11/21/08)
New York Times review by Karen Rosenberg (11/20/08)
The Economist ”Martin Ramirez: Spit and Crayons” (11/6/08)
NPR, All Things Considered “Ramirez Heirs Seeks to Reclaim Artist’s Lost Work” by Jon Kalish (10/28/08)
New York Observer “The Return of Martin Ramirez: Newly Discovered Drawings by the Seminal Outsider Artist” by Mario Naves (10/21/08)
Gallery Guide cover story (October 2008)
New York Magazine, Best 2007 Retrospective
New York Times article by Kathryn Shattuck, January 2007
Time magazine blog, 2007
American Folk Art, exhibition wall texts for 2007 show
Sacramento Bee on discovery of new works (10/29/07)
New York Times on discovery of new works (10/29/07)
LA Times: Brooke D. Anderson on discovery of new works
New York Times review (Roberta Smith)
New Yorker review (Peter Schjeldahl)
New York Times ”Close Reading”

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MARTÍN RAMÍREZ ESTATE

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