"The temptation to see works of Ramirez is another example of the art of piscóticos, these drawings suggest the four walls that was locked, or in the galleries of the paranoia. These pictures are resurrections of the lost world of their past and secret ways to get to another place, unknown to us. "
Octavio Paz
*****
born March 31, 1985 at two o'clock in Tepatitlán, Jalisco, Mexico.
Laborers Son, married in 1918 in Santa Ana María Navarro, moving into the municipality of Tototlán with the intention of starting a new life with Mary. There's three daughters were born the fruit of marriage; Teofila, Agustina and Juana. In 1924 Martin returned to his hometown, buying forty acres of land, which included a small adobe house and a garden.
But things should not go as well as they wanted, because Martin decided to emigrate to the United States in order to cover the debt incurred by the purchase of land and increase the productivity of the same.
In early September 1925, crossed into the United States El Paso, being contracted to work on the railways and later in a mine in California.
Five months had passed when the news of the birth of their son named Candelario, who only know him through a photograph sent by his brother Anastasio.
explodes in Mexico in 1926 a religious war Cristera call (also known as War of the Cristeros or Cristiada) consisted of an armed conflict that lasted from 1926 to 1929 between the government of Plutarco Elias Calles and secular militias , priests and religious Catholics who resented the implementation of legislation and public policies to restrict the autonomy of the Catholic Church.
war center was located precisely in the municipality of Tepatitlán. Being warned by his brother's inability to return to their country, since all participants were men in battle, without any possibility of neutrality.
The field was abandoned in Mexico during the war, agricultural production was paralyzed. Martin was evicted from his own country. To make matters worse in 1929 began the Great Depression in North America. Ramirez received a letter from her brother informing him of the destruction of property and death of their animals. California's government to reserve the few jobs being offered to white Americans, decide to deport anyone who looks Mexican.
all his colleagues in 1930 return to Mexico, but he tells his brother would never return home, to take charge of their children. In 1931 he was arrested by police wandering in Los Angeles, finding this in a state emotionally violent, destructive and dangerous. Being Moved to Stockton and admitted to the hospital for the mentally ill California's oldest. He was diagnosed with chronic depression.
In 1935, he began drawing, having produced his third failed attempt to escape the asylum and the inability to communicate, because they never got to learn the English language. In this attended hospital once a week to a ceramics workshop led by Marie DeShene, an artist and potter by the occupational therapy program. He also had contact with other inmates who produced art, including a patient who painted portraits.
spent fifteen years later, ie in 1948. Ramirez had lived crowded, sleeping on the floor in Stockton, with poor diet and bad hygiene. DeWitt was moved to hospital. As Ramirez has never agreed to perform the cleaning tasks that corresponded to the patients. His time was spent constantly smoking and producing art.
In 1950, the case of Martín Ramírez crosses the boundaries of the hospital, the news of his mysterious drawings came to a few artists including Wayne Thiebaud, one of the leading exponents of Pop Art this Being deeply impressed by the way Martin pasted in the lines of his drawings, the quality of the data despite its limited art supplies.
Inspired by a desperate urge to keep alive their memories of Mexico, chose the visual language as the only means possible to communicate their experience of immigrant and his personal tragedy.
never knew Ramirez was the exact amount because most were destroyed by the hospital staff where he was. Almost all the drawings on display in museums in the United States, Europe, Mexico and Japan from the collection of Tarmo Pasto, a painter and professor of art and psychology, to provide Martin rolls of paper, pencils and crayons to to keep drawing. Don Birrell, visual designer and director of the Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento, was among the first to recognize the quality of " work so mysterious."
In 1951 he had his first solo exhibition, attracting the interest of the public and the artistic community of sacrament.
in 1952 is visited by his nephew José Gómez, twenty-seven years had passed since he left Mexico, reaffirming his desire to never return home.
The last words spoken to his nephew, when asked for a message to his wife, deeply marked their families:
"Tell Anita that there are going to see in the valley of Jehoshaphat "
Newmeyer Alfred in 1954 organized the most important solo exhibition at artist's life, at Mills College, where they were exposed Picasso, Chagall, and Matisse. Being named among the artistic community as Henri Rousseau Mexico.
In 1963 died Feb. 12 of pneumonia at the hospital where he had been held the last eighteen years of his life.
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