Martin Ramirez

United States • 1895−1963
Martin Ramirez (Spanish: Martín Ramírez; 1895, Tepatitlán de Morelos - 1963) was a Mexican-born American self-taught artist of naive art.

He was born in the state of Jalisco. Married, father of four children. About 1925 he moved to the United States, worked on the railroad. Lost the power of speech. Haunted by hallucinations, was arrested in 1931 in Los Angeles, placed in Stockton Psychiatric Hospital with diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia.

In 1945 Ramirez began to paint. In 1948 he was transferred to a hospital in Auburn, California. Here his drawings were discovered and appreciated by Tarmo Pasto, a Sacramento University lecturer, psychologist and amateur artist. He began supplying the patient with drawing materials and showed his work to his gallery friends. Beginning in 1951, exhibitions of the artist's work in Sacramento, Chicago, New York and other cities followed.

Martin Ramirez died in 1963 in a mental hospital from pneumonia.

In January-April 2007, the American Folklife Museum showed a large retrospective exhibition of Ramirez's work.

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