Mel Ramos
1935-2018, American pop artist
He was one of the great painters of American Pop Art. Mel Ramos was born on 24 July 1935 in Sacramento, California. He became famous for his pin-up girls, which adorned famous brand-name articles.
The Pop artist studied art at Sacramento College. At the beginning of the 1960s, Ramos began to produce series of pictures with motifs borrowed from comic strips and strikingly bright colours.
From 1965 onwards, he produced the works that later became his trademark: He combined naked beauties from American magazines with well-known objects from the world of commodities. From this, he developed his own iconography, characterised by the over-emphasised nude figure standing out against the rearranged background.
"I make sure that my pictures are not too erotic and that they always have a trace of humour. Either you understand it or not." At times, his works were regarded as the epitome of bad taste, and there were accusations of sexism. From 1966-1997, Mel Ramos taught as a professor of painting at California State University, Hayward.
Today, Mel Ramos is compared to Warhol, Lichtenstein and Wesselmann. His works have been presented in numerous exhibitions and can be found in the most important collections of modern art.
Also, In Germany, his works are part of well-known museums and collections. "The fact that Mel Ramos has meanwhile risen again like a phoenix from the ashes of aesthetic dislocation and is in hot demand hardly needs to be mentioned," stated a German Newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in 2011. Ramos' works are collected worldwide.
Mel Ramos passed away on 14 October 2018 in his hometown Oakland/California.
