On May 5, 1930, the painter Alfredo Ramos Martinez (1871-1946) arrived in Los Angeles from Mexico City accompanied by his wife and infant daughter.  He was 58 years old.  A lifetime dedicated to painting and teaching, and a fervent belief in the power of art, lay behind him.  As Director of the National Academy, he had spearheaded institutional reforms thereby initiating changes in the theoretical and practical approaches to painting of the time.  As founder of the Open Air Schools of Painting, he had brought arts education within the reach of people of all walks of life.  Curiously however, his success as a painter continued to lie in the exploration of a trajectory begun during his years in Paris, a period which coincided with post-Impressionism.  As influential as his ideas had been in shaping the aesthetic of the Mexican arts renaissance of the twenties, his own work remained mysteriously untouched.

It is the circumstances of change (time, place and commitment) that bring about an extraordinary shift in Ramos Martinez’s aesthetic vision.  The works produced in California from 1930 on, are abruptly modern.  Focusing on the prevailing themes of the Mexican painting renaissance, Ramos Martinez produces enormous oil on canvas portraits of indigenous women which in their monumentality, transform the content into a pure experimentation of the parameters of volume and space.  A prolific painter, he explores this same language in lyrical memories of an indigenous Mexico in his elegant gouaches on newsprint, in which a restrained utilization of line and color are enhanced by the newsprint texture.  In a period beyond middle age, Ramos Martinez initiates a new beginning, California’s gift to him.  He, in turn, responds by leaving as his legacy both murals and paintings which illuminate this moment of our shared history.