Louis Stern Fine Arts is pleased to present Cordillera Mexicana, an exhibition of works by Alfredo Ramos Martínez (1871-1946) that highlights the artist’s profound connection to his homeland. From his earliest days, Ramos Martínez turned to nature for the inspiration that fueled a lengthy and fruitful career as an educator and artist. His earliest teacher, he would later recall, was the orange tree that grew on the patio of his childhood home in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. Its tranquil beauty sparked the young artist’s passion for reverently capturing the landscapes and people of Mexico, a conviction he would impart on the students at his revolutionary open-air schools. Ramos Martínez’s pupils, who included David Alfaro Siqueiros and Rufino Tamayo, painted outdoors at his urging. Embracing the rich history and natural wonders of their country, they pursued an artistic identity that was distinctly and uniquely Mexican.

When he moved to the United States in 1929 to seek medical care for his ailing infant daughter, Ramos Martínez carried memories of the Mexican landscape with him even as he established vibrant connections in his new home of Los Angeles. He indulged his long-held fascination with plants and flowers in delicate renderings of the pendulous floripondios, or angel’s trumpets, that grow as treasured ornamentals in both Mexico and Southern California. Though extinct in the wild in their native South America, these fragrant blooms thrive as transplants in both environments.

In Ramos Martínez’s painting El Valle de Mexico, Indigenous women in traditional dress bear the country’s flowers and fruits to market in the historical center of the Aztec Empire, now modern-day Mexico City. The mountains that ring the valley form a segment of the American Cordillera, the continuous string of ranges that stretch from Antarctica to South America to form the vast western backbone of the Americas. The artist’s Cordillera Mexicana pays tribute to the grandeur of the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range, reflecting memories of his childhood in Monterrey at the foot of the majestic Cerro de la Silla. Painting decades later in the shadow of LA’s Santa Monica Mountains, another link in this chain, Ramos Martínez maintained his vital connection to his homeland through works that transcended time, culture, and borders.

Works by Alfredo Ramos Martínez have been exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Dallas Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (MARCO), Mexico; and Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL), Mexico City, among many others. His work is held in numerous public collections, including the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; Dallas Museum of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles; Phoenix Art Museum; San Diego Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Louis Stern Fine Arts is the exclusive representative of the Estate of Alfredo Ramos Martínez.