The Brief

Maybe this has happened to you: A loved one dies, and then, while sorting through their remaining belongings, you discover something about them, something that makes you see them in a different light.

A new art exhibition at Scripps College has the same effect.

In “Pintor de Poemas: Unseen Works by Alfredo Ramos Martínez,” a series of mural studies, drawings, and paintings by the acclaimed Mexican modernist — some of which have never been shared with the public — recasts the artist's legacy.

In art history circles, said gallery director Erin Curtis, there’s a tendency to regard Ramos Martínez’s work, which often features Mexican landscapes and Indigenous people, as merely “serene, beautiful, decorative.”

But the exhibition, guest-curated by Scripps alumna Robin Dubin, shows that Ramos Martínez’s work was anything but apolitical.

A quiet rebellion

The bilingual show is divided into four sections: “revolution,” “labor,” “indigenismo,” and “war.”

In the gallery, kept dim to preserve the artist’s work, viewers will encounter a series of arresting images. This includes: A woman weeping over the body of a loved one; torture victims hanging with their feet and ankles bound; men toiling over the construction of new buildings, while, in another frame, another gaggle of men, clad in suits and bowties, smoke cigars and sip apéritifs; in another frame, four barefoot women — a group of flower vendors — walk in unison, with a determined look in their eyes as they face a day’s work.

Through wall text in English and Spanish, attendees learn that after 10 years of studying art in Europe, Ramos Martínez returned to Mexico City, just ahead of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. During that time, he established art schools, where students were taught to get out of the studio and paint the world around them. In 1929, Ramos Martínez came to the United States seeking medical treatment for his infant daughter, who was battling a serious bone disorder. Then, in the 1930s, amid the Great Depression, the country expelled or pressured an estimated 1 million people of Mexican ancestry to leave, including scores of U.S. citizens.

To understand Ramos Martínez’s work — including what he made public and what he shielded from view — knowing these biographical details is important, said curator Dubin.

At a lecture in 2023, she said the artist “was somewhat pigeonholed by his reputation as a painter of idyllic, rural, and poignant religious scenes.”

“Any commissions that came his way probably would have been with the understanding that this was the type of imagery that they could expect,” she said.

For a Mexican immigrant, failing to abide by expectations could be perilous. In 1932, the famed Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros — one of Ramos Martínez’s former students — was deported after completing “América Tropical” in downtown L.A. The mural, a sharp rebuke of imperialism and the oppression of Indigenous people, was whitewashed after its unveiling.

“Ramos Martínez was the primary earner for his family, which included a sick child who needed regular and extremely expensive medical care,” Dubin added. “Especially in the midst of the Great Depression, it's probable that he could not afford any loss of income ... that could affect his ability to access or pay for medical care for his daughter. These realities likely had an outsized impact on the types of public art commissions he was offered or prepared to accept.”

But, in private, Ramos Martínez was more rebellious.

In 1932, he used conté crayon and tempera to draw a man on a page from the L.A. Times. The man has high cheek bones and a strong, straight nose — features that according to curator Armando Pulido, the artist typically used to represent Indigenous subjects. The work is titled “El Defensor/The Protector,” and in this image, the unafraid man holds up a fist. This piece is an integral part of the show.

"El Defensor/The Protector," one of several pieces created by the artist on newsprint.

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© The Alfredo Ramos Martínez Research Project

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Courtesy Louis Stern Fine Arts

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Dubin named the exhibition after reading a line by Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío, whom Ramos Martínez befriended in Paris.

“Ramos Martínez es de los que pintan poesías ... no copia, sino interpreta. Él expresará la tristeza de los pescadores, la melancolía de las aldeas, los hombres inclinados por el peso del trabajo,” Darío wrote.

Those words are imprinted on a gallery wall: “Ramos Martínez is one of those who paints poetry ... he does not copy, but instead interprets. He will express the sorrow of the fisherman, the melancholy of the villages, the men bent under the weight of the work.”

Where else to visit after the gallery

Just a short walk from the gallery, visitors can continue learning about Ramos Martínez.

About 80 years ago, Scripps College commissioned the artist to paint a mural in the Margaret Fowler Memorial Garden.

The garden is housed in a tranquil courtyard, centered around a small fountain. Draped in wisteria, the garden walls are now home to a Ramos Martínez fresco. Here, students stop to leisurely read a book or catch up with friends. As a student at the women’s college, Dubin spent many afternoons there.

Making a fresco can be tough — it involves painting with water-based pigment directly onto wet plaster, so that the image becomes part of the wall.

Ramos Martínez died in 1946, before he could complete “Vendedoras de Flores (The Flower Vendors).” And because fresco work must be done in stages, viewers can see the progress of his work, how the mural was coming together.

“Las Vendedoras de Flores (The Flower Vendors)" at the Margaret Fowler Garden.

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Julia Barajas

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LAist

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When Ramos Martínez painted the fresco, he was housed in Dorsey Hall, the same dorm where Dubin lived decades later.

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Julia Barajas

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LAist

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One of the walls features a Zapotec woman, wearing the same type of headdress worn by women in Yalálag, a village in the Mexican state of Oaxaca.

During her lecture, Dubin reflected on the significance of her presence: “The elevation of this Zapotec woman, as an iconic and powerful figure, is a significant statement on the walls of an institution that in the 1940s admitted very few, if any, students or faculty of color,” she said.

It is also significant that Ramos Martínez painted this image at a school that was “constructed on Tongva land, using Spanish mission revival style architecture,” Dubin added.

In her view, the fresco was and remains an act of defiance.

“She represents a reclamation of Indigenous humanity,” said Dubin, “in a time and place that sought to dehumanize people like her.”

Plan your visit

“Pintor de Poemas: Unseen Works by Alfredo Ramos Martínez” will launch with a free opening reception Saturday from 7-9 p.m. The exhibition ends Dec. 14.

Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery: 251 E. 11th St., Claremont

Time: Wednesday to Sunday, noon to 4 p.m.

Margaret Fowler Garden: 1001 Amherst Ave, Claremont

Cost: Both spaces are free.

Where to park: Free street parking is available around the gallery.

The Supreme Court on Monday gave itself more time to consider a national ban on telemedicine access to the abortion pill mifepristone.

Justice Samuel Alito extended an earlier order he issued by three more days, so rules for prescribing mifepristone online or through the mail remain in effect through Thursday at a minimum.

The case at issue

The tumult over the future of telemedicine access to mifipristone started on May 1 with a ruling from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling re-instituted prescribing rules from before the pandemic that required patients to receive mifepristone in person in a doctor's office or clinic.

The Food and Drug Administration determined that the rule was medically unnecessary in 2021. The state of Louisiana sued last fall, arguing that telemedicine access undermines the state's abortion ban.

What is telemedicine abortion?

The telemedicine abortion process starts with a patient connecting with a healthcare provider on the phone or online. If the patient is eligible, that provider can prescribe two medications — mifepristone and another pill called misoprostol. Patients can pick up the medicine at a local pharmacy, or providers can mail the drugs to a patient's home.

That access is a big part of the reason why the number of abortions nationally has actually increased since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. Now, most abortions in the U.S. use this combination of medications, and one quarter happen via telemedicine.

After the 5th Circuit ruling, some providers said they would continue offering telemedicine access to abortion medication using a different protocol that involves higher doses of misoprostol and no mifepristone.

Researchers say that method is just as safe and effective, but tends to cause more pain for patients and more side effects, like nausea and diarrhea. Misoprostol has other medical uses, such as treating gastric ulcers and hemorrhage, and has been on the market longer than mifepristone. It is likely to remain fully accessible, even if mifepristone is restricted.

Since the FDA's prescribing rules for medications apply to the whole country, a change to the rules about how mifepristone can be accessed has national impact. That means it affects states with constitutionally-protected access to abortion, states with criminal bans, like Louisiana, and all states in between.

States' rights

Nearly two dozen Democratic-led states submitted an amicus brief in this case, writing that the appeals court decision put the policy choices of states with bans above the choices of states "that have made the different but equally sovereign determinations to promote access to abortion care."

There are also stakes related to the power of FDA and other expert agencies to set rules. While the Trump administration's FDA did not respond to the Supreme Court's request for briefs, a group of former leaders of the agency, who served under mainly Democratic and some Republican presidents, wrote about this in an amicus brief.

They defended the FDA's process in approving the medication and modifying the rules for prescribing it, and say the appeals court decision "would upend FDA's gold-standard, science-based drug approval system."

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