Mel Ramos: Catalogue Raisonne of the Paintings 1953-2015 - Hardcover

At the beginning of the 1960s, Mel Ramos (born 1935) devoted himself to the central theme of his oeuvre, developing the visual vocabulary that has become so characteristic of his work: naked women adorning oversized advertisement images. Mixing idealized women with the imagery of pop culture--Chiquita bananas, coke bottles and comic books--his colorful, two-dimensional oil paintings act as formulations of an erotic fantasy that represents a fundamental pattern of marketing strategies in advertising. Humorous and provocative, Ramos' works blend sex and materialism, emulating the glossy flatness of a pin-up magazine.
At over 300 pages, and with over 500 color illustrations, Mel Ramos captures the artist's entire painterly oeuvre, from his first works in the '50s until today, demonstrating his enduring position in the West Coast Pop movement.

In 1963 Mel Ramos, one of the first artists to embrace Pop Art, developed a preference for a tantalizing, seductive visual language. In typical Pop Art colors, beauty queens and nude Hollywood stars are combined with commodities to populate his paintings. In accordance with advertising aesthetics, he placed female bodies in erotic, occasionally vulgar poses on top of consumer goods, thus taking his theme from advertising s enduring slogan, sex sells.

Biography
1935 born in Sacramento, CA
1953 1958 studied fine arts at Sacramento State College, B.A. 1957, M.A. 1958
1965 1966 Sacramento State University
1966 Arizona State University, Tempe
1966 California State University, Hayward
lives and works in Oakland, CA, and Horta de Sant Joan, Spain