American artist Mel Ramos was part of the Pop Art movement and gained recognition in the 1960s for his paintings of idealized female nudes alongside pop culture elements such as brand logos and commercial products.

During his time at Tamarind in the early 1980s, Ramos created two unexpected editions, including one diptych. He extended his ongoing Pop Art sensibilities, using iconic landscape imagery to frame his interests in color, light, and surface treatments.

Ramos was born in Sacramento, CA, to a first-generation Portuguese-Azorean immigrant family. He earned his BA and MA degrees at Sacramento State College where he studied art under artist Wayne Thiebaud. 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 artists Nathan Oliveira, John Mattos, and João de Brito.

In 2011, Ramos was the subject of a major show at the Albertina in Vienna and a retrospective at the Crocker Art Museum in 2012. His works are included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, among others.