Jose Ramon Lerma

1930 - 2016

Jose Ramon Lerma

1930 - 2016

Jose Ramon Lerma, a San Francisco artist whose work spanned seven decades, died peacefully December 22nd in the Salinas Valley. He was 86 years of age.

Jose was born in 1930 in the Salinas Valley, the oldest of ten children. As a student in 1948, his artistic talent was noted by his teachers. He was awarded a scholarship to California School of Fine Arts (now SFAI), one of its first Latino students.

Drafted into the U.S. Army at the start of the Korean War, Jose was stationed close to the front. "Every day was intense. One was illuminated with the fear of dying." His experiences there transformed him as a person and as an artist. "I came home a changed person, and I became anti-war."

When Jose returned to the Art Institute, he "went into painting and drawing with a fury." The Art Institute was an important center for Abstract Expressionism, and there he studied under Elmer Bischoff, Nathan Oliviera, Hassell Smith and Dorr Bothwell.

Abstract expressionism gave Jose the internal language he sought. "Abstract art is creating something new - expressing emotion through the use of composition, color, texture, brush strokes. It comes from inside. Look for the emotional content."

Jose immersed himself in San Francisco's Beat Culture. His peers and friends included Wallace Berman, George Herms, Roy De Forest, Bruce Conner, Manuel Neri, William T. Wiley, Luis Cervantes and Jay DeFeo. Jose was close to photographers Imogen Cunningham and Jerry Burchard. Both caught his image in many photographs.

Jose Lerma was integral to the 50's burgeoning gallery scene with solo exhibitions at seminal gallery spaces the East-West Gallery, The Cellar, the Green Gallery, Spatsa Gallery and the Russian Hill Gallery. He found "the art world of the fifties free of the market and its temptations. There was a certain purity about it. We were creating a new language based on our history."

Jose Lerma's work was featured in numerous group exhibitions including the Oakland Museum, San Francisco Museum of Art, the deYoung Museum, Galeria de la Raza, Gallery Sanchez, the National Steinbeck Center, Somar Gallery, Mission Cultural Center, the Mexican Museum, Richmond Art Center, La Raza Graphics Center and SFAI's McBean Galleries. His work was exhibited nationally at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Albuquerque, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Evergreen State College and Tucson Museum of the Arts.

In his later years, Jose was celebrated with major retrospective exhibits at Intersection of the Arts, the John Natsoulas Gallery and Oakland's Civic Center Gallery.

Jose Lerma appears prominently in "The Heart of the Mission" by Cary Cordova (University of Pennsylvania Press.) Those wishing to study his work and papers should contact the Jose Ramon Lerma Archive in UC Santa Barbara's Special Collections.