American Folk Art Museum to showcase Martín Ramírez as so much more than a “schizophrenic artist”

It’s the 1930s: California police pick up a depressed and confused Mexican immigrant named Martín Ramírez, who doesn’t speak English. Ramirez is diagnosed as a “catatonic schizophrenic” and committed to a state hospital.

Early 1950s: Ramírez is still trapped in a mental institution, and has barely spoken in all this time. But he has become a self-taught artist—a master who has saved some of his drawings rolled up in his jacket and tucked under his mattress so the hospital staff wouldn’t discard them. (The staff believed the works were tainted because Ramírez has tuberculosis.) A visiting professor of psychology “discovers” Ramírez and provides him with art supplies.

Thirty-two years after Ramírez was first institutionalized: The artist is released and, well, to read the rest of the story you’ll have to follow this link to an article at Artdaily.com.

To see 90 of the artist’s works, you can check out the Martín Ramírez exhibit on view from Jan. 23 through April 29 at The American Folk Art Museum in New York City.

If a trip to NYC isn’t your budget, you can at least see a sampling of drawings by Googling for Martín Ramírez images.

posted by Daniele Sadres