Martin Ramirez: Creativity Can’t Be Caged

Martin Ramirez: Creativity Can’t Be Caged 

It’s often that the most unique and/or troubled souls are the most artistic and it’s always an inspiration to see them perform and create beautiful works of art. This is especially true with Artist Martin Ramirez. Having been diagnosed with catatonic schizophrenia, he spent most of his life in a mental institution. It was there that he created his most famous artworks.

Martin Ramirez was born in 1895 in Mexico, and migrated to California in 1925. He was first institutionalized in 1931, but moved to another hospital in 1948. It was at Dewitt State Hospital near Sacramento that Martin began his first works of art. They consisted of large and small scale collages made up of materials that he found and put together around the hospital. Tarmo Pasto, a visiting professor of psychology, discovered his works and began to collect them. The creations that he saved are the ones that Martin Ramirez is most famous for today. 

The materials that Martin used were common items. Brown paper bags, examining table cloth, and book pages were just some of the few scraps he incorporated into his collages. For glue, he concocted a mixture of potatoes and his saliva and used this mixture to put his collages together. His work had a pattern to it and included carefully placed lines to create and describe landscapes while the objects portrayed consisted of men riding horses, as well as Biblical figures and trains all amongst festive patterns.

The colors and patterns are very reminiscent of Mexican Folk Art, but with a modernized twist. In an article reviewing Martin’s work, Roberta Smith, a writer for The New York Times, said: “If you revere outsider artists as pure, isolated, often insane visionaries who exist outside time and place, make way for a so-called outsider whose work reflected many of the specifics of his cultural and historic moment. In addition, Ramirez’s art was in step with the explorations of many “insider” artists of his time, especially in his use of collage and images from popular culture.”  

In addition, Martin Ramirez also liked to create pots. Having mastered creativity, he would not only scavenge the hallways and rooms of the institutions for supplies, but he would experiment with different mediums and materials. In the mornings he would collect remains of oatmeal mush and use it to mold pots. Martin would then bake these pots on a steam radiator and the pots that he made were used to mix his paints in. His creativity withstood all bounds and limitations.

Following his death in 1963, Martin Ramirez’s work became the epitome of “outsider art.” Outsider art is a term describing art that was made by someone who had no artistic experience. The artwork is usually raw, self-taught and is reflective of the mental state of its creator. Most importantly, outsider art is usually discovered after the passing of the artist. Martin Ramirez’s art has now become highly valued and in 2007, the American Folk Art Museum in New York created an exhibition that displayed about a third of the work that Martin Ramirez created. This was the biggest exhibition of his work to date.

Currently, Martin’s work is displayed in museums all across the world and the story behind his art inspires many.

-Golda Steinberg