Born July 24, 1935 in Sacramento, CA

Mel Ramos received his first important recognition in the early 1960s; since 1959 he has participated in more than 120 group shows. Along with Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, he was one of the first artists to do paintings of images from comic books, and works of the three were exhibited together at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1963. Along with Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Tom Wesselman and Wayne Thiebaud, Ramos produced art works that celebrated aspects of popular culture as represented in mass media. His paintings have been shown in major exhibitions of Pop art in the U.S. and in Europe, and reproduced in books, catalogs, and periodicals throughout the world. Since 1992 Mel Ramos has been living and working alternately in Oakland, California and in Horta de San Juan in Spain.

Education

1954-55 Sacramento Junior College
1955-56 San Jose State College
1957 Sacramento State College B.A. Degree
1958 Sacramento State College M.A. Degree

Awards

2013 Lifetime Achievement Award, Palm Springs Fine Arts Fair, Palm Springs CA
1986 National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship Grant
United States-France Exchange Fellowship

Teaching Experience

1958-1960 Elk Grove High School, Sacramento, CA
1960-1966 Mira Loma High School, Sacramento, CA
1965-1966 Sacramento State College, Sacramento, CA
1966 Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
1966-1997 California State University, Hayward, CA (Professor Emeritus)


Artist in Residence

1970 Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
1973 University of Wisconsin, Madison, WS


Selected Exhibitions

2013 Pop Art Accrochage, Fluegel-Roncak Gallery, Nuremberg, Germany
2012 Mel Ramos: 50 Years of Superheroes, Nudes, and Other Pop Delights, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento CA
Museum Ritter, Waldenbuch, Germany
2010 “REAL: Realism in Diverse Media,” Imago Galleries, Palm Desert, CA
“Mel Ramos: 50 Years of Pop Art” Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria
2007 “The Left Coast”, Imago Galleries, Palm Desert, CA
2006 Life as a Legend - Marilyn Monroe, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, FL
2005 Mel Ramos, Recent Paintings, Imago Galleries, Palm Desert, CA
2003 Galerie Terminus, Munich, Germany
Riva Yares Gallery, Phoenix, AZ
Bemarducci-Meisel, New York, NY
2001 Les annees Pop, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
PopArt. US Connections 1956-66, Menil Foundation, Houston, TX
2000 10 Pop Artists on Paper, Clough-Hanson Gallery, Rhodes College, Memphis Tennessee
Cigart, South Texas Institute of the Arts, Corpus Christi, TX
Allen Jones, Mel Ramos, Tom Wesslemann, Galeria Punto, Valencia, Spain
Olympia Redux, The Contemporary Museum of Honolulu, HI
The Figure: Another side of Modernism, New House Center of Contemporary Art, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, NY
1999 Pop Prints, Museum of Modern Art, NY
1992 Hand-Painted Pop: American Art in Transition, 1955-82, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1993; Whitney Museum, NY 1993
Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid
Musee de Beaux-Arts de Montreal, 1993
1991 Pop Art, London, GB
The Royal Academy of Art, Ludwig Museum, Koln, D
1987 Made in the U.S.A. –An Americanization in Modern Art the 50’s & 60’s, Berkeley, The University Art Museum, CA
1985 Art in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-1980, Oakland, The Oakland Museum, CA
1984 Automobile and Culture, The Museum of Cotemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
1983 Modern Nude Paintings: 1880-1980, Osaka, Japan, National Museum of Art
The Comic Art Show, New York, The Whitney Museum of Art, NY
The First Show. Paintings and Sculptures from Eight Collections: 1940-1980, Los Angeles, The Museum of Contemporary Art, CA
1980 Mel Ramos: A Twenty Year Survey, The Rose Art Museum, Brandies University Waltham, MA
1978 Art about Art, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC
The Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery, University of California, Los Angeles, CA; Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR
1970 Pop Prints, New York, Museum of Modern Art, NY
1969 Human Concern, Personal Torment, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art
Spirit of the Comics, Philadelphia, Institute of Contemporary Art, PA
1963 Pop Art, USA Oakland Art Museum, Oakland, CA
Six More, Los Angeles County Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA

Selected Public Collections

Albertina, Vienna, Austria
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, ARK
Art Bank, U.S. Department of State, Washington D.C.
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
Des Moines Art Center, Iowa
H.M, de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA
deSaisset Museum, Santa Clara, CA
Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany
Indianapolis Museum, Indianapolis, IN
Kunsthaus, Darmstadt, Germany
Lakeview Museum of Arts & Sciences, Peoria, IL
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, Macedonia
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, Austria
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Neue Galerie Stadt Aachen, Aachen, Germany
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA
Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA
Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs, CA
Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA
Sintra Museo de Arte Moderna, Sintra, Portugal
Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Monterey Museum of Art, Monterey, CA

Selected Literature

1994 Rosenblum, Robert. Mel Ramos - Pop Art Images, Benedikt Taschen Verlag, Cologne, Germany
1980 Ramos, Mel. Mel Ramos: Watercolors, Lancaster-Miller Publishers, Berkeley, CA
1975 Claridge, Elizabeth. The Girls of Mel Ramos, Playboy Press, Chicago, IL