Insane Lawsuit Continues

We covered this story earlier this year, and now, the legal battle over Martín Ramírez’s drawings and art work continues to gain attention. The Guardian picks this story up today.

[A] multi-million dollar legal battle has begun over the ownership of his paintings, hundreds of which he simply gave away in the hospital ward. An auction of 17 paintings at Sotheby’s was recently halted when lawyers for the Ramírez family claimed them.

Ironically, The Guardian reports that:

Adding to the bitterness of the dispute is the fact that the Ramírez family, originally Mexican farmers, burned all the paintings sent to them from the hospital when they learned that Martín Ramírez, who used his own spit in his paintings, was being kept on a TB ward. Only the paintings Ramírez gave away to others – paintings the family is now claiming – survive.

After a major retrospective of his work in New York last year, a reviewer for the New York Times declared that he was not just a great outsider artist – creating outside the artistic mainstream – but “simply one of the greatest artists of the 20th century”.

National Public Radio has also covered this story.