Mel Ramos

1935 – 2018

In the early 1960ies Mel Ramos began a series of garishly colored super-heroes taken from comic strips using a thick oleaginous pigment. He was first included in a collective exhibition in Pop Goes the East at the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston. In 1964 he had his first solo exhibition at the Bianchini Gallery, New York. Later on he developed a specific kind of Pop Art iconography by combining nude pin-up girls from American magazines and advertisements with branded products. Some critical observers of the “art scene” persist in classifying Mel Ramos as a Pop Artist. His identification with the Pop movement of the 1960’s was much too narrow to account for the braoder context of his paintings. His humor is not satire of ridicule. His “parodies”are respectful, affectionate tributes, a celebration of images with personal meanining.