Lot 19
Mel Ramos (1935-)
Lot 19 Details
Mel Ramos (1935-), American
SENORITA RIO (FROM 1¢ LIFE), 1964
Colour lithograph on BFK Rives watermarked paper with centre fold as issued by the publisher; from the total edition of 2100
Image sight 15.3" x 21.1" — 38.9 x 53.5 cm.
Estimate $400-$600
Literature:
Walasse Ting, 1¢ Life, E.W. Kornfeld, Bern, 1964;
Manfred Katz, Much pop, more art. Kunst der 60er Jahre in Grafiken, Multiples und Publikationen, (Stuttgart. DEU) 1992, pg. 50;
Pop Impressions Europe/USA: Prints and Multiples from the Museum of Modern Art, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA), pl. 98
Note:
In 1964, Walasse Ting invited Mel Ramos to participate in his project for a book titled 1¢ Life. For this ambitious project, Ting invited a multitude of artists, spanning various genres, to create lithographs to illustrate his poems. The result was an unbound portfolio of 62 lithographs. Other contributing artists include: Robert Rauschenberg, Jean-Paul Riopelle, James Rosenquist and Andy Warhol.
Ting specifically requested that Ramos compose this lithograph based on Senorita Rio. The voluptuous femme fatale figure first appeared in 1963 from a series by Ramos known as The Heroines. The Puerto Rican heroine is positioned adjacent to Ting’s poem, America “as an exegesis of corporate domination and rampant racism in the United States.”