Mel Ramos: First Kiss

A concise overview of the Pop maestro’s works on paper across a half-century

American painter Mel Ramos (1935–2018) cemented himself as a key figure in Pop art at a momentous 1963 group exhibition at LACMA that presented his work alongside that of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. He then established a signature style for himself by appropriating and recontextualizing the sexually provocative imagery found in magazine ads of that time. Ramos’s most famous paintings feature voluptuous female nudes positioned on top of various consumer goods, including corn stalks, Chiquita bananas, candy wrappers and martini glasses.
This new catalog presents approximately 70 works on paper spanning his entire career, including never-before-published preliminary sketches and finished oil paintings, rendered in a classic Pop color palette of bright pinks, yellows, blues and greens. The works presented vividly convey the artist’s meticulous eye for composition.