Mexican artist Ramos Martinez (1872-1946) studied art at the San Carlos Academy in Mexico City, then spent 14 years in Paris. In 1913 he became director of the San Carlos Academy of Art (now called the National Academy of Fine Arts). He almost immediately founded the first of his Schools of Open Air Painting, which encouraged students to work outdoors in order to more closely observe nature. Muralist David Alfaro Siquieros was one of his first students. The serious bone disease of his only child brought Ramos Martinez and his family to Los Angeles in 1930 in search of specialized medical treatment. He exhibited his paintings in local museums and galleries, and received residential mural commissions from such Hollywood celebrities as screenwriter Jo Swerling, designer Edith Head, and director Alfred Hitchcock. In 1934 he did a set of murals for the chapel of Santa Barbara Cemetery. In 1937 he painted a fresco over the main portal of the Church of Mary, Star of the Sea in La Jolla (in San Diego County). The last project with which he was involved was a panel fresco at the Margaret Fowler Memorial Garden at Scripps College in Claremont, California. Only two of the nine panels were completed before Martinez died in 1946.
Martinez worked on commissioned murals while living in Los Angeles and was soon accepted as part of the artistic community there. He was recognized for his Mexican genre scenes painted in rich browns and ochres. His work established him as part of the Mexican School but he did not have the political message of his Mexican contemporaries such as Diego Rivera and Jose Orozco.
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The following is from the Art Cellar Exchange of San Diego, California:
Before there were Diego, Kahlo, Orozco, and Siqueiros, there was Alfred Ramos Martinez - whose art remained focused on the daily lives of his people and the traditions from their rich heritage. Martinez would be among the few academic artists to defy the trends against the native traditions of Mexican art, and consequently move away from the European modernist movements. His motives were not as blatantly political as Rivera or Orozco, but he did share a similar desire with them to institute his ethnic and cultural heritage within modern Mexican artistic production. Alfred Ramos Martinez was born in Monterey, Mexico in 1871. He began his artistic studies from 1884 -1892 at the Academia Nacional de Belles Artes, Mexico City. He attracted the attention of Phoebe Hearst, the mother of William Randolph Hearst, who provided financial support and arranged for him to leave his native country and study in Paris. Hearst supported him for almost four years, until 1906 when his painting "Les Printemps" was prize winner at the famous Salon d'Automne. From then on Martinez was able to support himself. He returned to Mexico in 1907 and within three years was appointed Director of Mexico City's School of Fine Arts.
Over the next twenty years he would continue to accept commissions for murals and other paintings. He was married in 1928, and only a year later, following the birth of his daughter, left Mexico behind to settle in Los Angeles where his daughter could receive the best medical care for a life-threatening congenital disease. He left Mexico an educated artist of great repute, only to be received in California with the fleeting enthusiasm of Hollywood socialites that perceived him as no more than the artistic version of Carmen Miranda.
However, Martinez's "fame" was enough to gain him entry into the Los Angeles art community where he painted frescoes in the patios of famous Hollywood celebrities and other important socialites, in hotels, chapels, and more. Although the commissions he received in the U.S were not as esteemed as his last (the Mexican Government had commissioned him to paint "Las Flores Mexicanas" as a wedding present for Charles and Ann Morrow Lindbergh) he was able to maintain an active artistic life to support his family. Martinez had one-man shows at the Los Angeles County museum, the San Diego Art Gallery, the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, as well as various private and public galleries throughout California.
When Alfred Ramos Martinez died in 1946, he had completed only two panels out of a nine panel mural entitled, "The Flower of Vendors" at the Margaret Fowler Memorial Garden at Scripps College in Claremont, California.
Margaret Fowler Gerden Fresco - more pics
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