For those interested in following Los Altos de Jalisco, Northern
California/Sacramento region, you may want to review the life of Martin
Ramirez, incredible artist who spent the later part of his life in an
institution as a result of schizophrenia.
The limited info on his life, indicates he fled Mexico around 1925 after
the Cristero period and was recognized for his work after his death when
much of his work was shown in New York, at the Crocker in Sacramento ...
Here are the links though other's may have info on his geneology..
http://www.metroactive.com/metro/06.20.07/martin-ramirez-0725.html
"""In recent years, thanks to the tireless research of Víctor M. Espinosa
(whose essay, with Kristin E. Espinosa, in the catalog for the show is
invaluable), many particulars about Ramírez have come into focus. He was
born in 1895 in Rincon de Velázquez near the small town of Tepatitlán, east
of Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco.
Los Altos de Jalisco, the region of his birth, maintained a strong Catholic
tradition, and Ramírez absorbed a great deal of Catholic imagery. Much of
that early exposure to church statues and paintings showed up years later in
his art, especially in his monumental paintings of Our Lady of the
Immaculate Conception. A photograph in the Heritage Plaza exhibit shows a
local statue of the Virgin with the iconographic detail of Mary stepping on
the serpenta detail that Ramírez uses several times in his Madonna
portraits. """
http://www.studio-international.co.uk/reports/ramirez.asp
""""Although great gaps remain in the chronology of the artist's life, it is
known that Ramírez was born in a very religious and conservative part of
Mexico, Los Altos de Jalisco in west-central Mexico. Before leaving Mexico
in August 1925 to seek work in the USA, Ramírez had married and fathered
three girl children. In February 1926, with her husband out of the country,
his wife gave birth to their only son. From 1925 to 1930, Ramírez worked on
the railroad and in the mines of northern California. It seems that the
first traces of his abilities appeared during these years, small drawings in
the margins of letters to his family. In 1931, San Joaquin County police
officers found him homeless, hungry and disoriented and took him to Stockton
State Hospital. Doctors there diagnosed him as manic-depressive. During the
next few years, Ramírez made a number of escapes from confinement but,
finally, in 1934, he returned on his own and thereafter remained in the
institutional system. For all of that time, he did not speak. It seems as if
this was a choice and not a disability. Ramírez spoke Spanish and may have
preferred to express himself in ways that make translation unnecessary. His
works transcend verbal communication and convey, within a single picture,
the essence of a lifetime.
To understand Ramírez, one must have a sense of the changes he experienced
in Mexico and the USA. From 1926-29, a vicious struggle between church and
state tore Mexico and its people apart. Reacting to the anti-clerical
Mexican Constitution of 1917, the rebels waged what they thought of as a
holy war. Ramírez was a Roman Catholic, attended mass and sided with the
rebels. The Ramírez home was destroyed in the conflict and his family lost
everything; when Ramírez received news from home, somehow he decided that
his wife had joined the militant government. At that point, it appears, he
gave up hope of returning to his homeland. Later, in 1952, when a nephew
visited him at the hospital, Ramírez was unwilling or unable to make much of
a connection. """"
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/cultura/52421.html
http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/7aa/7aa869.htm
http://www.marquand.com/index.php?page=book&bookID=1&type=intro
http://www.moifa.org/exhibitions/past/vernacularvisionaries/vvartistram….
html
http://www.folkartmuseum.org/images/2097/afam_2097.pdf
http://www.folkartmuseum.org/images/2118/afam_2118.pdf
Deborah Ortiz
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