Two Mexican muralists produced work at the Claremont Colleges in the middle years of the 20th century, yet the results couldn’t be more different.

Over at Pomona College’s Frary Dining Hall, students eat under José Clemente Orozco’s “Prometheus,” in which a nude male deity attempts to steal fire from Mount Olympus, straining at the borders of the violent image as onlookers react.

Blocks away at Scripps College’s Margaret Fowler Garden is a quieter masterpiece.

In “The Flower Vendors,” women, solo or in small groups, carry flowers on their way to the marketplace. At work, their expressions are serene, dignified.

Alfredo Ramos Martínez painted “The Flower Vendors” in 1946. That March, with one assistant, he began work on the 100-foot-long mural, composed of multiple panels. That November, though, he died unexpectedly of heart failure at age 73.

“The Flower Vendors” was never completed, but it’s close enough — more on that in a minute.

Born in 1871, Ramos Martínez was described as early as 1916 as a “painter of women and flowers.” “The Flower Vendors” doesn’t exactly overturn that characterization.

But there was a lot more to the artist. An overview of his work is now at the college’s Williamson Gallery (251 E. 11th St., Claremont). “Pintor de Poemas (Painter of Poems): Unseen Works by Alfredo Ramos Martínez” is up through Dec. 14.

Themes include labor, revolution, war and Indigenous people. (Also, women and flowers.)

Compared to contemporaries Orozco, Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, Ramos Martínez is “seen as apolitical,” said Erin M. Curtis, director of the gallery. “He was, in fact, politically engaged.”

We walked through the exhibit last week. Curtis explained how Ramos Martínez, who had studied in Paris and taught in Mexico (Siqueiros was among his students), was really a modernist, not a folklorist.

He immigrated to Los Angeles in 1929 to seek medical care for his newborn daughter’s bone disease and kept busy to pay for it, producing public and private murals around Southern California, some of the rural Mexican scenes then in vogue.

Privately, though, he was producing very different work.

Paintings or drawings depict figures at work, suffering as war victims or engaging in political organizing. In two of the latter, a crowd of people face the same direction, slightly to one side, except one who meets our gaze, as if to say, “What are you looking at?”

A few, made during the Depression, were drawn on single newspaper pages, including want ads, using the makeshift canvas as further commentary.

Some large-scale drawings were studies for murals Ramos Martínez never produced, for whatever reason.

“Perhaps he painted what was palatable,” Curtis mused. “He was trying to raise money to help his daughter.”

Two large studies for “The Flower Vendors” are included in the exhibit, a glimpse of his creative process. How did that commission come about?

“Millard Sheets invited him to create a mural at Scripps College,” Curtis said, referring to the famed painter and muralist who led the Scripps art program. “I think he wanted Scripps to have a work of similar distinction to Orozco’s at Pomona College.”

Sheets wrote at the time: “I am proud to live in a little town that will possess Orozco’s ‘Prometheus’ and the Martinez mural, two distinguished examples of Mexican contributions to American culture.”

At an exhibit reception last month, at least 150 of us crowded inside the Williamson Gallery to learn more about Ramos Martínez.

“Isn’t this beautiful? Can’t you feel the energy of this wonderful artist, who has in many ways been overlooked?” Martha Gonzalez, a Scripps associate professor of Chicanx/Latinx Studies, told us.

Gonzalez added: “I’m proud to be associated with Scripps College, which recognized his genius very early.”

In 2026, it will be the 80th anniversary of “The Flower Vendors” and of Ramos Martinez’s death, as well as Scripps’ centennial year.

In the meantime, Curtis told me, the exhibit allows us “to reevaluate ‘The Flower Vendors’ narrative in light of this work” that shows he was more than a decorative artist.

After the walk-through, I went to the Fowler Garden, which is walled off but open on weekdays.

Built in 1934, it’s a lovely space with an open-air courtyard, trellises on the sides above flagstone walkways, burbling fountain in the center.

The mural occupies an entire interior-facing wall, with inset benches directly underneath.

According to the Williamson exhibit catalog, the mural has been “a backdrop for everything from Nativity scenes to nude brunches.” (Suddenly I’m envisioning some lively 80th anniversary events.)

In many of the mural panels, women walk with flowers: in their hands, in their arms, in baskets on their backs or atop their heads.

It could be considered folkloric. Yet I remembered what Curtis had said about viewing the mural in light of the art at the gallery, which often features Indigenous people at work.

She had also told me this: “Illustrating the dignity of women’s labor is a powerful message for an artwork placed at a women’s college.”

Ramos Martínez drew directly on the plaster to work out the proportions, then applied wet plaster on top, sketching the images again from memory with red crayon, according to Curtis. From there he painted in color.

“The Flower Vendors” is made up of nine panels. To my eyes, six appear finished. Two more are fully sketched but only half-filled in with color. Might these have been the last portions he worked on before his death? Another is only a drawing in red outline, with no color.

It’s striking anyway: a close-up of a woman’s strong face, cheekbones high, nose flat, hair coiled in thick braids atop her head, gazing directly at us.

The mural is, let’s say, 85% complete. That it’s incomplete almost doesn’t matter.

As Ramos Martínez’s final work, the panels immortalize the stages of his working process. They also serve as a poignant, frozen-in-time display of his own mortality, captured on a wall at a college rather than on an easel in his studio.

There was talk in the wake of Ramos Martínez’s death of having Sheets complete the mural. But “The Flower Vendors” was, thankfully, left untouched.

Gonzalez said: “Even the unfinishedness of it is beautiful to me.”

David Allen finishes as best he can Friday, Sunday and Wednesday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, and follow davidallencolumnist on Facebook or Instagram, @davidallen909 on X or @davidallen909.bsky.social on Bluesky.