Charles F. RAMUS

Charles Frederick Ramus (1902–1979) was a Denver-born and raised artist, art historian, and educator. Raised both in the city and its surrounding countryside, he began formal artistic training at the Denver Academy of Applied Arts before following his mentor, painter John E. Thompson, to the newly founded Chappell House art school. Although trained primarily in drawing and painting, Ramus gravitated toward printmaking and assisted Thompson on mural commissions. This led him to Mexico in 1925, where he worked alongside major muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. During this period, he discovered the work of Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada, sparking a lifelong passion for collecting prints. Ramus went on to assemble a varied personal art collection, with special focus on prints. These personal interests ultimately enriched the Denver Art Museum, where his 1948 gift of twenty three Posada prints (as well as other works of art) remains a cornerstone of the museum’s Latin American holdings. From 1929 onward, Ramus became primarily a scholar, first as Curator of Primitive Arts at the Cleveland Museum of Art, then as a lecturer in art history University of Denver and a Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Detroit Art Museum. In the early 1930s, and again in 1939, Ramus created lithographs. The extent of his output is hard to gauge but seems to have been limited. Social commentary subjects dominate these prints Ramus died of cancer in 1979.