Mel Ramos

Mel Ramos (July 24, 1935 – October 14, 2018) was an American painter; Since the 1960s, he became internationally known with figurative paintings of women and consumer goods. His hyper-realistic work is considered to be part of pop art. In his work, Ramos combines realistic depictions of women and enlarged consumer products against monochrome backgrounds. Since 1959 he has participated in more than one hundred and twenty group exhibitions. His work has often been shown alongside work by pop artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg and James Rosenquist in the United States and in Europe. The work was frequently reproduced in books and magazines. Mel Ramos started painting comic book heroes like Batman in 1961. From 1963 onwards, he mainly focused on depicting Wonder Woman, other female superheroes and pin-up girls, in an environment of Western consumer goods such as Coca-Cola bottles and luxury cars. It is not immediately clear whether his work denounces the exploitation of female beauty in advertising or whether he himself unabashedly idealizes female beauty. When asked, he stated that he does not paint women but "images of women", so material for dreams with which he wants to please rather than provoke.