Before he received an M.F.A. from the
California Institute of the Arts he had studied painting at Southern Illinois University. He was a graduate assistant to
Allan Kaprow. A
conscientious objector, Ramos was jailed for 18 months for
draft evasion. Early in his career he received a
National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship, a
Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, and an Aspen Fellowship from the
Aspen Institute. During the 1970s and 1980s, Ramos traveled widely in Europe, Africa, China and the Middle East. He documented the end of Portugal's colonial rule in
Cape Verde and in
Guinea-Bissau. He was in
Teheran during the 1980
Iran hostage crisis. == Exhibitions and screenings ==