BUFORD, GA. – Slotin’s annual Spring Masterpiece sale produced a $44,400 result for “Caballero,” a 1930s graphite on paper by Martín Ramírez (1895-1963). The work measures 23¾ by 25½ inches and has provenance to the late dealer Phyllis Kind, who championed the artist’s work.
The caballero features prominently in Ramírez’s work, believed to be a nod to his Mexican upbringing, where ranchero culture encompassed his early life. In 1925, 30-year-old Ramírez left his wife and children in Mexico to seek a better future in California. Only six years later, he was institutionalized for schizophrenia and would spend the rest of his life in a California mental institution. It was there that Ramírez began to draw images of his past, what would go on to become his entire body of work.
Similar Caballero images – an armed rider on horseback beneath a structure of geometric lines – are in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Williams College Museum of Art.
Watch for a full review in a future issue.
