In the early 1960s Mel Ramos born 1935 one of the first artists to embrace Pop art abandoned Abstract Expressionism and began to produce the work for which he is best known glossy flat paintings of idealized voluptuous female nudes emerging from banana peels lounging on top of cigars or caressing bottles of ketchup. Taking advertisings enduring maxim sex sells to its most extreme ends Ramos poses the nude female figure in erotic occasionally even vulgar positions on top of the most banal consume