Alfredo Ramos Martinez
Mexican, 1871-1946 (active Mexico, and USA)

La pintora de Uruapan (Uruapan Painter), 1930 ca.
oil on board
28 x 24 in.

SBMA, Gift of the P.D. McMillan Land Company
1963.24



Early self portrait of the artist

RESEARCH PAPER

Introduction:
Alfredo Ramos Martinez (RM) (1871-1946) is best known for his modern Mexican paintings and murals. Rather than adopt the abstract modernist movements of his time, he created his own unique style using images of his native peoples and land as their theme and capturing emotions in bold colors and simple forms. Donald Bear, former Director of the SBMA, said, "His (Ramos Martinez's) influence as a teacher giving artists permission to interpret their values in their paintings is remarkable." Bear went on to say: "His experimentation with mural painting techniques was the foundations for the work of the great muralists." Therefore, he called Ramos Martinez " the originating spirit" for the Renaissance of Mexican Art." (#1 page 50) This is the new Mexican style we attribute to his students like David Alfredo Siqueiros and to Diego Rivera and Rufino Tamayo.

His early Life:
Born in Monterey, Mexico in 1871, Ramos Martinez (RM) was the ninth child of Jacob Ramos and his wife, Luisa Martinez. His father was a fine fabrics merchant who included in his wares, charro suits and hand woven zarapes from Saltillo. So from Ramos Martinez's very early life he was surrounded by vivid colors and stories of the native Indian peoples who had created the rich tapestries. It was his mother with whom it had a deep bond; she valued high culture and fine arts and throughout his life encouraged him both to study the great artists but also to believe in himself as artist. They lived a deeply happy and religious life in a very loving family, and years later when his mother was ill and dying he frequently went to Cuernavaca to be with her. While caring for her, he spent much of his time painting the colorful flowers and rich landscapes of this region.

Formal Schooling:
In1884 at age twelve, having won a competition in San Antonio, Texas with a portrait of the Governor of Monterrey Ramos Martinez received a scholarship to the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. He stayed there until 1892. Though he was criticized for skipping classes in formal training, his works often received first prize in school exhibitions. Instead of sticking to the classical approach of drawing from casts of famous works of art, Ramos Martinez preferred to go out and find images in everyday life and nature that "were full of life and color" and "expressed movement and feeling." (#1: page 18). In 1892, age twenty-two, he was invited to paint flowers on menus for the luncheon at the home of Porfirio Diaz, the President of Mexico. Phoebe Hearst, the mother of William Randolph Hearst, was so taken by these flower paintings, she became his patron, providing financial support and even arranging for him to study in France.

In Paris, for the next 12 years, he studied the works of the great masters, especially Velazquez. While visiting the seashore in Brittany, he found the images so rich but he was out of paper when he asked the innkeeper if he had more paper. The only thing the innkeeper had was newspaper. He found that paper absorbed the tempura paint and produced an effect similar to fresco. He also loved that the vertical lines and the gray color of the printing enriched his backgrounds. (#1, page 21) From this time on, RM frequently produced his works on newsprint because he loved the fresco like effect. It was his works on newsprint, which attracted Mr. Zuloaga, famous for painting rich colorful images of Spanish women and common peoples of Spain and guest critic to the school. Mr. Zuloaga, loved the simplicity of RM's style and sponsored an exhibition for French patrons to see his works. Most of RM's paintings sold at this show! With his artist friends, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin, and Central American poet, Ruben Dario, he attended the soirees at Zuloaga studio. Dario said of RM: "He is one of those who paints poems: he does not copy, he interprets: he understands how to express the sorrow of the fisherman and the melancholy of the villages." (#1 page 23) As a rare distinction for someone from another country, he was elected to the Society of French Watercolorists and in 1906, his painting Le Printemps was the first prizewinner at the famous Salon d'Automne. From then on, Ramos Martinez was able to support himself as an artist.

Return to his Native Country.
But missing his family and longing for his native land and the images he loved there, he returned to Mexico in 1907. After a period of struggle over whether to recommit himself to painting these indigenous themes rather than the salon style images he had been creating in Europe, in 1912, he was offered a position as director of the Academia de San Carlos. But objecting to requiring that students follow the classic training there, that he had rejected in his own training and wanting instead to give them a place where they could create their own unique styles and express emotions in their works, he founded the Outdoor School of Painting at Santa Anita. Among his most important students was David Alfredo Siqueiros. Ironically, during this period because of his popularity among the Mexican aristocracy, for creating a school of truly Mexican style, his own best works of this time were their portraits.

By 1917, under the condition that he could change the old curriculum as he had at the Santa Anita School, he was appointed to the Academia de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. His optimism and enthusiasm created a place where students were nurtured and excelled. His students consistently received first prizes in competitions. In his school, students Jean Charlot, Diaz de Leon, and Fernando Leal made their first woodcuts of Mexico and established their careers. Frederico Cantu considered RM his most important teacher and friend. Among the students, Luis Martinez and Manuel Villarreal both received these awards at the 1925 Pan American Exposition in Los Angeles. When in 1926, Plutarco Elias Calles, President of Mexico, led an excursion to Europe in which the Chamber of Commerce had organized a collection of native products and handicrafts, it included over 200 paintings from RM's students. Many well-known European artists, including Picasso, Foujita (the Japanese painter), Raoul Dufy, and sculptor Lipschittz, attended this exhibition many times. The European critics celebrated it! And with their praise, RM's ideal that Mexico would one day be recognized as a great place of art was realized.

His years as Painter in America:
Ramos Martinez was married in 1928, and only a year later, he had to relocate his family to Los Angeles, California, to seek superior medical care for their daughter's congenital bone disease. Though meant to be a temporary visit, the cost of this medical care consumed their savings so he was forced to stay here in United States. By 1931, Ramos Martinez was invited to exhibit at the Museum of Los Angeles and the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego and in 1933 at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. In 1934, an exhibition of his works was held at the Faulkner Memorial Art Gallery in Santa Barbara. From this, RM was commissioned to paint the frescos in the Chapel of the Cemetery of Santa Barbara: designed by the famous architect, George Washington Smith. His widow and Henry Eicheim a noted composer and patron of the arts, commissioned RM to paint the walls of the Chapel. They wanted the artist to create the interior frescos to sympathize with the architectural and structural form. These fresco images of the Suffering of Humanity and Peace be Unto You are among his best known works: and express the beauty of his deep religious faith and compassion. In Understanding Modern Art, Leo Katz said of his work: "Martinez's drawings are simple, large and strong to the extreme, as if created by nature without the slightest show of technical ability. They are drawn with such devotion and intensity that some of his outlines seem to burn into the paper. Without copying any of the pre-Columbian styles, he revives the grand power of simplification and the great mastery of architectural design which were so characteristic of the unknown masters of ancient Mexico." (#1 page 35)

After his completion of this commission, RM remained in Santa Barbara to paint frescoes in many private residents of Santa Barbara before returning to Los Angeles. From 1942 until his death in 1946 with the exception of a commission to do a mural at Scripps College, most of his work returned to images from his childhood and early years with paintings of the native Indian peoples of Mexico, landscapes of Monte Alban, and figures of women engaged in pre Columbian graveside rituals similar to early images of rituals from ancient Egyptian and Asian cultures. RM said: "Our Indians, shaping their clay and decorating it, are as great in their artistic honesty as Michelangelo and Titian. They put into the work all their being. It is as though they themselves became part of the same clay. Our people are all love, all spontaneity, in the sparkling representation of their art." (#1 page 39).

The Art Work:
The Uruapan Painter was painted in 1930: donated to the SBMA in 1963 by P.D. McMillan Land Company after the death of P. D. McMillan. It is a 24" by 24" oil on board painting. The Donor P. D. McMillan owned railroad and timber lands in Minnesota and Canada and became a part time resident of Santa Barbara. As a brilliant business man, he was well past his middle years before he began to collect, but art became his passion. In the 50's he become a Trustee of the SBMA along with his social friends, Mrs. Stanley McCormick, Charles A. Storke and Wright Ludington. After his death while most of his European art works were donated to Minneapolis Institute of Arts, he gave all of his RM paintings to SBMA. This included several of RM's works on newsprint and this oil painting of the Uruapan Painter. (#2 SBMA archives).

Point of View:
With her nearly-closed eyes, the intense but serene focus on the face of this painter, the rounded form of her vivid yellow dress slouched-over and mimicking the shape of the plate set separating the body by contrast of shapes to the lush green plants in the background, and then central prominence of her forearm engaged in this painting the plate all seem to signify that this is about the creative act and not about her. As we notice the many finished plates in the background, we are aware that despite what might at first seemed as repetitive production of these native Indian peoples' craft for the sake of their livelihood, each piece is being created with as great a passion as any artist creates any work of art.

Composition:
Despite the bright colors and bold shapes of the background, one can still sense the serenity. The compositional balance creates this serenity. The center line of the mass of the subject is seated slightly to the left of center but is counter-balanced by the position, size, and weight of the two red and black plate she is painting and which directs the eye to the plates in the background. The simple lines of hairline, the curves of the nose, and the line which marks the center of the dress, take the eye down to the arm that carries the eye across to the brush, held at a diagonal. It is here that the eye engages in the act of painting.

Color:
The directionality of light to set off the colors of this painting follows this same compositional line from lower right to upper left. Created from dense rich vivid colors of oil paint on the smooth board, this painting demonstrates Ramos Martinez's fresco like style of painting. The colors are intense, with a high chroma yellow and red, contrasted by the deep chroma of the greens, and yellow ochre of the surrounding landscape and the deep black of her hair balanced by the rich black in the plate. The shadowing of the subject and vegetation serve to heighten this the impact of this contrast in chromas as well as giving a greater sense of depth to the composition as your eye travels from the foreground to the background.

Shape:
The interplay of bold simple geometric shapes is essential in creating such a serene image from such bold forms and colors. The ovoid head and of the bowl counterbalance the blocky rectangular shape of the larger mass of the body. The many small rectangles of the stacked bowls perpendicular to the body mass, mid way up the body, serve to reduce the impact of the large rectangular mass of the body. The plates are then counterbalanced once again by the small rectangles that hold her paint pigments in the lower left of the board/canvas. In graduated steps they shapes take the image from bold to intimate. By contrast the sharp, artichoke-like shapes of the vegetation behind her and then the smaller ones in the lower right hand corner set off the geometric shapes to cause us to focus our eye so that we can feel the containment and therefore the serenity of the Uruapan Painter even though the forms are bold.

Conclusion:
Even though this work, The Uruapan Painter, was painted in 1930, at the height of Ramos Martinez's popularity in America, we see in it the threads of his past themes from his early childhood; his love of vivid color done in frescoes like techniques, and the skill with which he can paint emotion even into simple geometric forms. It is clear that he has total respect for her creativity and artistry even as he conveyed to his many students. Perhaps as you hear more about him and take time to look at her again, you might see how the culmination of his life's work is portrayed in her.

Prepared for the SBMA Docent Council by Mei Chih Ho, 2004

Bibliography:
1. Maria Sodi De Ramos Martinez, Alfredo Ramos Martinez, Published by the foundation in 1949.
2. Newspaper archives of the SBMA
3. George Raphael Small, Ramos Martinez, His Life and Art, F&J Publishing Corp, 1975.
4. Alfredo Ramos Martinez, written and published by Louis Stern galleries, in 1991.

All references are available at the library in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.