(Sacramento/California 1935–2018 Oakland/California)
The Transfiguration of Galatea#5, 2002, signed, dated on the reverse MelRamos 2002, oil on canvas, 162 x 108 cm, framed

We are grateful to Rochelle Leininger, Mel Ramos´s daughter, for the kind assistance.

Provenance:
Mel Ramos Studio, Oakland, California (label on the stretcher)
Galerie Ernst Hilger, Vienna - acquired directly from the artist
Private Collection, Germany
Sale Sotheby’s New York 13. May 2009, Lot 222
Private Collection, North Rhine-Westphalia

Exhibited:
San Francisco, Modernism Inc., Mel Ramos: New Paintings & Works on Paper, Nov/Dec. 2002 New York
Bernarducci. Meisel. Gallery, May 2003 (rest of a label on the stretcher)
New York, Louis K. Meisel Gallery, November 2004 (label on the stretcher
Hamburg, Thomas Levy Galerie, Mel Ramos, Retrospektive
1961- 2007, November 2007

Literature:
Thomas Levy (ed.), Mel Ramos, Catalogue Raisonné der Bilder, Bielefeld/Berlin 2016, no. 02-7, page 237 (color ill.)
Donald Kuspit, Louis K. Meisel, Mel Ramos Pop Art Fantasies,
The Complete Paintings, New York 2004, p. 160 (ill.)
Thomas Levy, Mel Ramos - Heroines, Goddesses, Beauty Queens, Bielefeld 2002, p. 227 (ill.)

“The whole point of my art is that art grows out of art.”

Mel Ramos

The series of “Unfinished Paintings” is seamlessly followed by the series of transfigurations of Galatea, a nymph from Greek mythology. While the Unfinished Paintings deal with the female figure between sketch and incarnation, the Galatea series depicts the metamorphosis from sculpture to woman. In this group of works, the ideal beauty of antiquity is fused with today’s ideal of female beauty: we see half painting, half sculpture. The painted hard stone meets the soft body, exemplified by the folds on her stomach. Ramos delights in revisiting art history and playing the role of the Greek mythical king Pygmalion, who falls in love with the statue of a beautiful woman he has sculpted. “In his reinterpretation of history, Ramos captures the moment when Galatea is no longer quite a sculpture and is not yet quite a woman... Ultimately, this is about the artist’s self-ironic examination of his work.”

Thomas Levy (ed.), Mel Ramos, Catalogue Raisonné der Bilder, Bielefeld/Berlin 2016, p. 24