Martín Ramirez

Martín Ramirez

Martín Ramirez

Identity

Lemaire designed a capsule wardrobe based on the figurative and abstract drawings of Mexican folk artist Martín Ramírez (1895–1963). Atelier Dyakova was commissioned to create a stamp for Lemaire’s Martín Ramirez silk foulard.

Consecrated belatedly as one of the greatest self-taught master draftsmen of the 20th century, Martín Ramírez had a tragic destiny marked by the trials of migration, labour exploitation, cultural displacement and forced isolation: his work is a powerful testimony to this. In 1925, leaving his family behind, he entered the United States to work in the mines and the construction of railways. A few years later, subject to mental disorders, he was hospitalised before being sentenced to involuntary confinement for the rest of his life.
The foulard features his drawing Untitled (Madonna) from ca. 1948–63. We wanted the stamp to feel like part of the artwork. So we hand-drawn the seal echoing Ramirez’s writing found on his work Boat and Canal to create a signature stamp. Its hand-written quality ties it within the same visual world as the drawing on the foulard.

2020