Legal battle looms over Martin Ramirez's artworks
Two lawsuits seek to establish ownership of the drawings created by the late mental patient.
A bicoastal legal battle has erupted over who owns 17 never-exhibited drawings by Martin Ramirez, whose artworks, created while he lived in California state mental institutions until his death in 1963, can fetch six-figure sums.
Is Maureen Hammond, a widowed retired schoolteacher living in Needles, a multimillion-dollar art thief who tried to dispose of ill-gotten gains through a Sotheby's auction? Or was Hammond, 69, the grateful, appreciative and legitimate recipient of a gift of Ramirez's drawings bestowed by a psychologist who befriended the artist, encouraged his work and was the first to begin circulating it in exhibitions during the 1950s?
Legally, attorneys for Hammond said Monday, the case could turn on whether Ramirez was legally competent under California law and therefore capable of making gifts of his work to his psychologist friend, Tarmo Pasto, who died in 1986.
Ramirez's estate, headed by two of his grandchildren living in Alhambra and Bell Gardens, sued Monday in U.S. District Court in New York City to recover the drawings, contending that Hammond "concealed her possession of the works for over 40 years, until, motivated by the rapidly escalating value of Ramirez's work," she tried to cash in at an auction that was scheduled for September but has been called off amid the litigation.
Beating the heirs to the punch, Hammond had sued Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, seeking legal affirmation that she owns the drawings, that she has the right to sell them and that Ramirez's family has inflicted emotional distress on her with "extreme and outrageous" demands.
Hammond, said her attorneys, Rick Richmond and Brent Caslin, never hid the drawings but shared them with students and colleagues during her career as an art and special education teacher. According to their account, she was pursuing a master's in art therapy at Cal State Los Angeles in 1961 when she wrote to Pasto, a professor at Sacramento State specializing in the use of art in treating the mentally ill. Pasto responded with information -- and along with it enclosed the 17 drawings as a gift, according to Hammond's suit.
"She's heartbroken that she's found herself at a point where she has to part with them" but needs to raise money for her retirement and to help a family member with medical bills, attorney Richmond said.
mike.boehm@latimes.com
