Fresco History: June 2003 Archives

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.