MEL RAMOS

BORN:   1935, Sacramento, CA                
              Lives and works in Oakland, CA and Spain

EDUCATION:

1958       MA, Sacramento State College
1957       BA, Sacramento State College
1954-55  Sacramento Junior College
1955-56  San Jose State College

OVERVIEW:

In 1954 Ramos began studying art and art history at Sacramento Junior College and California State University under Wayne Thiebaud.  In 1958 he took up a teaching post at Elk Grove High School and at California State University.  The subjects of his own works of the early sixties are taken from the world of comic books.

After participating in the exhibition "Pop Goes the East" at the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston in 1963, the artist established himself as one of the main representatives of Pop Art beside Warhol,  Lichtenstein and Rosenquist with the first exhibition of his own at Bianchini Gallery in New York the following year.

In the mid-sixties, Mel Ramos turned to the depiction of single female figures.  Pin-up girls from advertisements and magazines are draped over painted commercial articles to parody the trivial and glamorous gestures of the advertising industry.  A solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco took place in 1967.  In 1972, the artist presented his work at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City, followed by the exhibition "Pop Art" at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 1974. In 1977 Ramos had a retrospective at the Oakland Museum of California.

n 1980 he took up a chair at California State University in Hayward. At this point the painter became interested in self-portraits and landscape painting.  In 1986 Ramos received the National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship Grant. In that year he participated in an exchange of scholarship holders between America and France, followed by travels to Sicily and Tenerife in 1987 and 1991. Since 1992 the artist has lived and worked in California and Spain. Ramos' comments about his art are succinct: " I make sure that my pictures are not too erotic and that they always have a trace of humor. I make sure they are ‘in good taste.’ Either you understand it or not."

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
Franklin House Collection, San Francisco, CA
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN
Kunsthaus Darmstadt, Germany
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, Austria
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Neue Galerie Stadt Aachen, Germany
Plattsburgh State Museum Art Museum, Plattsburgh, PA
Oakland Museum of California, CA
The Rose Art Museum, Bandeis University, Waltham, MA
St. Mary's College of Maryland, Boyden Gallery, St. Mary's City, MD
Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, State University of New York, New Paltz
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Seattle Art Museum, WA
The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

SELECTED BOOKS:

1965       Rublowsky, John. Pop Art, Basic Books, New York
1966       Sedgwick, John. Understanding Modern Art, Random House, New York
1966       Lippard, Lucy. Pop Art, Praeger-Random House, New York
1969       Arnason, H.H. History of Modern Art, Prentice Hall-Abrams, New York, pp.567, 601,1064
1969       Compton, Michael. Pop Art, Hamlyn House, Middlesex, England
1969       Russell, John and Suzi Gablik. Pop Art Redefined, Praeger Publishers, New York
1972       Hunter, Sam. American Art of the 20th Century, Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York,
1972       Sternberg, Jacques. Kitsch, Academy Editions, London, England 
1974       Gerdts, William. The Great American Nude, Praeger Publishers, New York
1974       Plagens, Peter. Sunshine Muse. Praeger Publishers, New York
1974       Wilson, Simon. Pop, Thames & Hudson, Ltd., London, England
1975       Battcock, Gregory. Super Realism, E.P. Dutton Co., New York
1975       Claridge, Elizabeth. The Girls of Mel Ramos, Playboy Press, Chicago, IL
1975       Pierre, Jose. An Illustrated Dictionary of Pop Art, Eyre Methuen, London, England, pp.37,126
1977       Adams, Hugh. Art of the Sixties, Phaidon Press, Ltd., Oxford, England, pp.72-73
1980       Field, D.M. The Nude In Art, Hamlyn Publishing Group, London, England, pp.122-126
1981       Selz, Peter. Art in our Times, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York
1980       Albright, Thomas. Art in the San Francisco Bay Area 1945-1980, University of California Press, Berkeley
1985       Martin, Alvin. American Realism - 20th Century Drawings and Watercolors (From the Glenn C. Janss Collection),
                       San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in Association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc.,
                       New York, pp.109 Illustration, 149,222
1986       Arnason, H.H.  History of Modern Art, (third edition), Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, pp.448, 471
1988       Ward, John L. American Realist Paintings 1945-1980, UMI Research Press, Ann Arbor, MI, p.149, 277,278
2004       Kuspit, Donald. Mel Ramos, Pop Art Fantasies: The Complete Paintings, Watson-Guptill Publications, New York

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