 |
Martin Ramirez
American nationality
Born in Jalisco, Mexico, on March 31st, 1895
Dies in Auburn, California, on February 17th, 1963
|
|
| |
| We know little of the life of Martin Ramirez. Most
of the information we have, comes from notes by Dr. Tarmo Pasto who discovered
him in the 40s. He was born in Mexico and immigrated to the United States
with the hope of finding work. He employs himself as a railroad worker but
cannot cope with the difficulties of the job. His physical and mental health
deteriorates rapidly. He sinks into madness and from 1915 on, becomes mute.
For the next fifteen years he will wander from one place to another and
in 1930 will be hospitalized for schizophrenia. |
| |
| Martin Ramirez starts drawing in the 50s on pieces
of retrieved paper, which he glues together with bread dough or mashed potatoes. |
| |
| His artistic production is very moving and of exceptional
quality. He is one of the best artists of Art Brut and can be compared to
the greatest artists of this century. His work is descriptive and abstract.
He imprisons his favorite figures (Mexican bandido, Madonna, wild animals,
trains) into interwoven architectural elements. His figures become icons,
impossible dreams, stifled hopes, unreachable freedom. There is a feeling
of total captivity, of a recurring nightmare as his echoing lines bring
to the drawings an overwhelming and hypnotic effect. They trap us into their
concentric trajectory from which one cannot escape. Ramirez's work is most
gripping in its contrast between movement and confinement, the feeling of
hope with no exit, given by the trains that never seem to stop: never ending
circles, which make us dizzy, constant spiraling, frantic escape into a
tunnel. |
| |
| These images remind us of the stress felt by a person
who would walk forever down the same interminable lines of a corridor... |
| |
| Once in a while, however, as the rabbit escapes from
the hat, the "cavaliero" disappears from the line of sight of the watchman.
The roads turn upward to look like a pyramid, building a flying platform
from which he can disappear, giving the feeling of a "happy ending" from
a Hollywood western. Ramirez must have seen those dream-like posters before
entering the abyss of the Rio Grande. |
| |
| Ramirez's treasures add up to about three hundred drawings. |
| |
| ...Return
to index |