Folk remedy

Martín Ramírez, Untitled (Tunnel with Cars and Buses)

Photograph courtesy of Robert M. Greenberg, New York

Misunderstood is a label applied, somewhat recklessly, to countless creative types. But in the case of self-taught artist Martín Ramírez, it’s certainly apt. Born in Jalisco, Mexico, in 1895, Ramírez left his wife and four children in the 1920s to seek his fortune in the U.S. Unable to speak English or find gainful employment, he became unstable and was eventually committed to a psychiatric hospital, where he was diagnosed (possibly incorrectly) as a catatonic schizophrenic. As a patient at Dewitt State Hospital—the Northern California mental asylum where he spent the last 15 years of his life—Ramírez created an astounding oeuvre of detailed collages and crayon-and-colored-pencil drawings, nearly 100 of which are now on display in a new retrospective at the American Folk Art Museum.

Given his backstory, deconstructing Ramírez’s work through a Freudian lens would seem to be an obvious tack, but it’s one the exhibit’s creators intentionally avoided. “He’s has been looked at from a psychological point of view for over 50 years,” says AFAM curator Brook Davis Anderson. “I thought it was worth addressing his work from other perspectives—culturally, historically, biographically.”

To help her widen the scope of discourse, Anderson teamed with experts in contemporary art, Mexican history and culture, and Ramírez’s personal history, with each contributing a share of the exhibit text. They have fertile territory to cover, as several prominent motifs recur throughout Ramírez’s work: the Virgin Mary, the jinete (horse and rider), landscapes and, most distinctly, trains and tunnels. “Art historians have had a field day with that one,” says Anderson. “The train is always Ramírez, the tunnel is his mother’s womb. But it’s not always that simple.”

The first of its kind in North America, the Folk Art Museum show also serves to dispel certain misconceptions about Ramírez’s life: that he lived and worked in isolation, that he was deaf and that he left no family. (In fact, his great-great granddaughters were among the first to view the retrospective.)

Anderson believes what makes Ramírez so compelling (and so often misunderstood) is that his work defies categorization. “His visual vocabulary is so distinctive—his aesthetic so unique—that he’s not part of any school or movement. He’s truly one of the master draftsmen of the 20th century.”

“Martín Ramírez” runs at the American Folk Art Museum through Apr 29. Visit folkartmuseum.org.