Last week, a new set of first class postage stamps was unveiled by the United States Postal Service at Ricco Maresca Gallerly, in Chelsea. The honor conferred on the artist, Martín Ramirez, has  been a long time coming; in conjunction with the issue, the gallery is presenting an exhibition of work by Ramirez. Following are extracts from the archives of Folk Art magazine, the publication of the American Folk Art Museum (AFAM), which is housed in an office building opposite Lincoln Center, in New York.

First, Ramirez's biography, from the 2007 exhibition organized by the museum, which was presented the following year by the Milwaukee Art Museum:

One of the self-taught masters of twentieth-century art, Martín Ramirez, created some three hundred artworks of remarkable visual clarity and expressive power within the confines of DeWitt State Hospital in Auburn, California, where he resided for the last fifteen years of his life.
Ramirez’s complexly structured works are characterized by skillful and inventive draftsmanship and extraordinary spatial manipulations. The artist employs a diverse repertoire of imagery, fusing elements of Mexican and American culture, the environment of confinement, and his experience as a Mexican living in poverty and exile in the United States. 

Martín Ramirez, Untitled (Train and Tunnel), c. 1960-63. Courtesy Ricco Maresca Gallery.

Martín Ramirez (1895–1963) left his native Mexico in 1925 with the aim of finding work in the United States and supporting his wife and children back home in Jalisco. Political and religious struggles in Mexico that directly affected the welfare of his family, as well as the economic consequences of the Great Depression, left him homeless and without work on the streets in northern California in 1931. Unable to communicate in English and apparently confused, he was soon picked up by the police and committed to a psychiatric hospital, where he would eventually be diagnosed as a catatonic schizophrenic. Ramrezspent the second half of his life in a succession of mental institutions in California. 

During those thirty-two years, Ramirez hardly spoke to anyone. However, sometime in the mid-1930s, he began to draw. In the early 1950s, Tarmo Pasto, a visiting professor of psychology and art at Sacramento State University, saw some of Ramirez’s drawings in the ward at DeWitt State Hospital and recognized their singular artistic value. Pasto not only made Ramrez a subject of his research into mental illness and creativity but also started to supply him with materials, collect his drawings, and, by organizing public exhibitions, introduce his artwork to the public.

Right: Martín Ramirez, Untitled (Feathered Train), c. 1952063. Courtesy Ricco Maresca Gallery.

During the more than five decades since the fortuitous meeting between Pasto and Ramirez, much has been speculated about the artist’s life and work. His oeuvre forms an impressive map of a life shaped by immigration, poverty, institutionalization, and, most of all, art. Migration and memory seem to factor strongly in every image. His compositions document his life experiences; favored images of Mexican Madonnas, animals, cowboys, trains, and landscapes merge with scenes of American culture. 

Ramrez never seemed to tire of his preferred topics, yet within his limited set of subjects he demonstrated an amazing range of expression. While his singularly identifiable figures, forms, line, and palette reveal an exacting and highly defined vocabulary, they also show Ramirez to be an adventurous artist, exhibiting remarkably creative explorations through endless variations on his themes.
—Brooke Davis Anderson, curator, AFAM.

To read press reviews of the 2007 exhibition, go here. To read Peter Schjeldahl’s review in The New Yorker, go here. To read about the Obsessive Drawing exhibition, presented in 2005 by the AFAM, go here. To read an article about Martín Ramirez, from the Winter 1995/1996 issue of Folk Art magazine, go here. For information about the USPS stamp issue, go here.

The exhibition, Martín Ramirez | Forever, continues at Ricco Maresca Gallery through May 2. 529 West 20th Street, 3rd Floor, NY, NY.

When the Curtain Never Comes Down, an exhibition about performance art, daily rituals, public action and enactments, continues at the American Folk Art Museum through July 5. 2 Lincoln Square, Columbus Avenue at 66th Street, NY, NY.