Mel Ramos (b. 1935 in Sacramento, California), painter of nudes and a pioneering Pop rebel, is considered one of the most important representatives of the California variety of POP ART. After spending a large part of his youth in California, he began studying art and art history in 1954 at Sacramento Junior College and then at Sacramento State College a year later. There he was taught by famous painter Wayne Thiebaud, and graduated with a Master of Arts degree.

Like his colleagues in New York he began his career as a commercial graphic artist, and was similarly preoccupied with the everyday mythology of his time: with comic-strip figures and the synthetic dreams of the advertising world.

Since the appearance of comic strips at the end of the nineteenth century there had been a wide variety of reciprocal influences between the fine arts and comic art. In the nineteen-fifties and -sixties, however, British and American Pop Art started an artistic discourse whereby the fine arts sought new expressive possibilities in their controversial citation of comic motifs. Mel Ramos’ paintings also celebrate the idols of his childhood, and beginning in 1961 he immortalized in oil paintings such super heroes as Captain Midnight, Batman, and Wonder Woman, and these brought him his first successes. The physical presence of the figures is communicated by his impasto style of painting; the figures accost the observer frontally and seem almost ready to pop out of the canvas. Isolation and aestheticization lead to an “iconic” appropriation of the pictorial world of comics.

Since 1963 Mel Ramos has developed a penchant for the conventional erotic fantasies about women, from cartoon super-heroines and dominatrices all the way to pin-up girls. It is particularly with his pin-up girls, taken from advertising posters and magazines and draped over painted commodities, that Mel Ramos parodies the trivial affectations of glamour of the advertising industry, which attempts to influence consumer behaviour with these types of marketing strategies. With his legendary advertising pin-ups he has given consumer goods such as Coca-Cola, Gitanes, and Cohiba a sensual eroticism. At first glance one could also take many of his works to be typical product advertisements of the era. Despite the clarity of his composition and his balanced forms, Mel Ramos – like many artists of Pop Art – works with double entendres, for his works are formulations of an erotic fantasy that illustrates a fundamental pattern of marketing strategies in advertising. Irony is a constant presence. Ramos exposes the advertising industry’s strategies by exhibiting them as visual quotations.

From 1972 on Ramos satirized the nude paintings of classical masters such as Ingres, Modigliani and Manet in his “Unfinished Paintings”, whereby he replaced these masters’ subtle eroticism with the more direct sex appeal of the pin-ups. He transformed the original compositions into contemporary interpretations with drolly ironic undertones. Even works by Willem de Kooning, an important influence of his student days, were satirically reworked by Ramos. For the passionate fan of the female figure it makes no difference whether he availed himself of high art or of mass media.

“It is important to me to use well-known cultural symbols, which everyone immediately recognizes.” His paintings, populated by provocatively smiling heroines, are an expression of a positive world view. “Criticism is not my goal, nor my justification. I simply want to show phenomena”, says Ramos, “and my entire art is an homage to women.”

Besides his wife and favourite model Leta, he has immortalized innumerable beauties (including Hollywood stars) in striking poses and glowing colours: they are captured in his paintings as seen through oversized keyholes, surrounded by tropical fruits, enthroned on gigantic consumer products, or with wild animals and rare birds.

Today, Mel Ramos lives and works in Oakland, California and Horta de San Juan, Spain. His paintings hang in many important public collections and Museums (such as the Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna, Museum Ludwig in Aachen, and the Hamburger Kunsthalle).

2010

Galerie Hilger, Wien
Modernism, San Francisco
Kunsthalle Tübingen
Museum Villa Stuck, München

2008

Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York

2007

Stadtgalerie Klagenfurt
LEVY Galerie, Hamburg
Robert Sandelson Gallery, London

2006

Walter Bischoff Galerie, Berlin
Claustro de Exposiciones, Cádiz
Galerie Hilger, Wien

2005

Galerie Geiger, Konstanz
James F. Byrnes Institut, Stuttgart

2004

Robert Sandelson Gallery, London
Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York

2003

Bernaducci-Meisel, New York

2002

Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna
Palazzo dei Sette, Comune di Orvieto

2001

Galerie Ernst Hilger, Wien
Galerie Levy, Madrid

2000

Kunsthaus, Köln

1999

Galleria Civica di Modena

Kunsthaus Hannover
Museum Moderner Kunst – Stiftung Wörlen, Passau

1998

Galeria Nova, Bad Homburg

1997

Galerie Ernst Hilger, Wien
Galerie Levy, Madrid

1996

Modernism, San Francisco
Galerie Levy, Hamburg
Galerie Ulrich Gering, Frankfurt
Galerie Levy, Hamburg

1995

Kunstverein Mannheim
Kunsthalle zu Kiel
Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst, Wien

1994

Kunstverein Lingen

1992

Galerie Maximilian Krips, Köln
ARTAX, Düsseldorf

1991

Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York

1988

James Corcoran Gallery, Santa Monica

1987

Studio Tresorio, Neapel

1986

Galerie Tanja Grunert, Köln
Hokin-Kaufman Gallery, Chicago

1981

Modernism, San Francisco

1978

Galeria Plura, Mailand

1977

Oakland Museum, 1. Retrospektive

1975

Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld

1974

Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York

1972

Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City

1971

Galerie Richard Foncke, Gent
French & Co., New York
Galerie Bruno Bischofsberger, Zürich

1967

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

1966

Galerie Ricke, Kassel

1965

David Stuart Gallery, Los Angeles

1964

Bianchini Gallery, New York