Martin Ramirez
(1885-1960)

Martin Ramirez sought a better life than he faced in Mexico by emigrating to California sometime between 1900 and 1910. Unfortunately, he found only despair there. The railroad work he took up did not prove fruitful, and he ended up an indigent on the streets of Los Angeles. He soon lost his power of speech, and eventually was placed in the DeWitt State Mental Hospital. He spent the remaining thirty years of his life there.

After twenty years of institutionalization, Ramirez began to create drawings and collages on sheets of paper glued together with mashed potatoes. He hid his works of art, for he knew it was the policy of the hospital staff to confiscate and burn such creative efforts. In 1954, he presented a group of his pictures to Dr. Tarmo Pasto, a psychology professor at Sacramento State College who was working at the hospital. The doctor obtained permission from the hospital administration to keep the drawings. He provided Ramirez with art supplies, and in 1968, with the assistance of the artist Jim Nutt, organized the first exhibition of Ramirez’s work. The artist's drawings were meticulously executed in graphite, colored pencil, or crayon, and some incorporated pictures taken from magazines. Ramirez depicted subjects ranging from cowboys, animals, trains and tunnels to Madonnas. The figures were often depicted on stages and placed in deep illusionistic space. Ramirez died at the age of seventy-five, leaving a body of work that consists of over three hundred drawings.