Martín Ramírez

Did Martín Ramírez create art because he was mentally ill? Or did he do it to keep from going insane?

Born in 1895, the Jalisco, México native has been hailed as "one of the greatest artists of the 20th century" by The New York Times. Ramírez, who spent most of his life in mental institutions, was considered an "outsider artist" – art made by someone out of touch with reality.

In 1925, a 30-year-old Ramírez left México to look for work in California, leaving behind his pregnant wife and three kids. After finding employment in mining and railroad construction, Ramírez kept in touch with his family by sending letters, many of them containing drawings in the margins.

By late 1930, the Great Depression left Ramírez both jobless and homeless. A year later, he was detained by San Joaquin County police for erratic behavior and an inability to communicate. Ramírez was committed to Stockton State Hospital for manic depression and was eventually diagnosed as a catatonic schizophrenic.

A self-taught artist who only spoke Spanish, Ramírez spent his days drawing cowboys, trains and churches on whatever he could find, including paper cups and pages torn from books. Instead of using crayons to draw, Ramírez melted them and used the wax as ink. He also used a matchstick as a pen and a tongue depressor as a ruler. Many of his early work was destroyed, as hospital workers were instructed to throw away or burn his drawings.

After being transferred to DeWitt Hospital, Ramírez was visited by Tarmo Pasto, an artist and psychology professor at Sacramento State College who was intrigued by Ramírez's drawings. Pasto spent years observing Ramírez, who rarely spoke while institutionalized and only occasionally answered "sí" to the psych professor's inquiries. Pasto eventually arranged art shows featuring Ramírez's work, but many of the Mexican artist's drawings didn't surface until after the death of Pasto in 1986.

In 2007, New York's American Folk Art Museum opened the first major art show featuring Ramírez's art. That same year, over 140 of his drawings were discovered by Peggy Dunievitz, who had the pieces sitting in her garage for years. The daughter-in-law of Dr. Max Dunievitz, a doctor who also observed Ramírez at DeWitt, Dunievitz says her family nearly threw the drawings away.

Now with over 400 drawings to take in, scholars are drawing connections between the themes in Ramirez's art and his life in México. The churches resemble those he grew up with in Jalisco. The horses were similar to the ones Ramírez learned to ride as a child. The trains and tunnels symbolized distance and isolation. Maybe Martín Ramírez was very much in touch with reality.

Ramírez died at DeWitt State Hospital in 1963. He was 68 years old.