Generations of Pop!

Generations of Pop!
Featuring Mel Ramos and Friends:
Gabriel Navar, Eric Grbich & Martin Segobia

Exhibit Dates: October 25 - November 10, 2018

Opening Night and Artist Reception: Saturday Oct. 27, 6:00 - 8:00pm

The Jennifer Perlmutter Gallery is pleased to present "Generations of Pop! Mel Ramos and Friends" An exhibit that includes artwork by Mel Ramos and three young artists who are influenced and inspired by his work. Pop art and illustrative themes dominate the work of the "next generation" - Gabriel Navar, Eric Grbich & Martin Segobia. Mel Ramos (born July 24, 1935) is an American figurative painter, specializing most often in paintings of female nudes, whose work incorporates elements of realist and abstract art. Born in Sacramento, California, to a first generation Portuguese-Azorean immigrant family, he gained his popularity as part of the Pop Art movement of the 1960s. Ramos is “best known for his paintings of superheroes and voluptuous female nudes emerging from cornstalks or Chiquita bananas, popping up from candy wrappers or lounging in martini glasses”. He is also a retired university art professor. Visitors will be delighted and amused by the work on view which includes paintings, drawings and prints. The exhibit is on view October 25 through November 10. Meet Mel Ramos and friends at the Artist's Reception on Saturday, October 27, 6:00-8:00pm.

According to Wikipedia: Ramos received his first important recognition in the early 1960s; since 1959 he has participated in more than 120 group shows. Along with Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, he was one of the first artists to do paintings of images from comic books, and works of the three were exhibited together at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1963. Along with Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Tom Wesselman and Wayne Thiebaud, Ramos produced art works that celebrated aspects of popular culture as represented in mass media. His paintings have been shown in major exhibitions of Pop art in the U.S. and in Europe, and reproduced in books, catalogs, and periodicals throughout the world.
In 2009, Ramos was part of the first Portuguese American bilingual art book and exhibit in California “Ashes to Life a Portuguese American Story in Art” with fellow artists Nathan Oliveira, John Mattos and Joao de Brito. Ramos has been represented by the Louis K. Meisel Gallery since 1971. He has also been represented for many years by San Francisco’s Modernism gallery and Galerie Ernst Hilger, Austria. A major exhibition of his work was held at the Albertina in Vienna in 2011. A retrospective of over 50 years of his work opened at the Crocker Art Museum in his hometown of Sacramento on June 2, 2012.

This show includes three other featured artists that are brilliant in their own right! Martin Segobia, Eric Grbich and Gabrial Navar. These three artists have exhibited together in a previous show at the Jennifer Perlmutter Gallery and are coming together again with Mel Ramos as friends and fellow artists.

Image credit: “Selfie 4 summers slippin” by Gabriel Navar