FOUND: 144 drawings by Mexican folk artist Martin Ramirez

By: By Ula Ilnytzky | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 02, 2007

NEW YORK

More than 140 drawings by the late Mexican folk artist Martin Ramirez, once destined for the trash, survived for more than 20 years in a garage in California and will be shown next year at the American Folk Art Museum.

Ramirez, a self-taught draftsman, spent almost 30 years in mental institutions. The discovery of his works was astounding, given that only 300 of his drawings and collages were known to exist until now, the museum said.

The 144 works, drawn in the last three years of his life, were found in excellent condition. They had been stored in boxes atop a refrigerator in the Sacramento area garage of a woman whose father-in-law was medical director at a state hospital where Ramirez was a patient.

"Although I always thought there would be a work or two or three found in attics or basements of nurses, doctors and janitors, it's beyond my imagination that we would find over 100 works," said curator Brooke Davis Anderson. "This is more than significant." Anderson is a former director of Diggs Gallery at Winston-Salem State University.

Ramirez composed in a figurative style with detailed, symmetrical motifs that fused his recollections of growing up in Mexico's rural Jalisco state, his migrant worker years in California and his subsequent hospitalization after a mental breakdown.

His drawings command tens of thousands of dollars on the art market.

Earlier this year, the museum mounted a well-received retrospective of 96 of Ramirez's works. Some of the newly discovered works will be displayed next October, Anderson said.

Peggy Dunievitz, 73, called the museum after reading an article about the retrospective. Her father-in-law, Dr. Max Dunievitz, was medical director at DeWitt State Hospital in Auburn, Calif., where Ramirez died in 1963 at age 68. Until reading the article, she had been unaware of the significance of Ramirez's works.

The family has donated three of the works to the museum; the remainder will be sold and the money will be donated in honor of Ramirez's family to a foundation to preserve Mexican heritage. Ramirez's heirs have never owned one of his drawings.

Socorro Alonso, 29, a great-granddaughter of Ramirez, said the family was "overwhelmed" with the discovery, and happy to know "that there's more for everyone to see."

Dunievitz's son, Phil, said the drawings had been set aside to be thrown out after Max Dunievitz died in 1988, but that he rolled them up and put them in the garage because he remembered seeing them in his grandfather's house.