Page 63 - 50.La Biennale di Venezia issue of World of Art Magazine

Appasionata / Carol Rama
Appasionata, 1941
Acquerello su carta
32 x 43 cm.

After the end of the Second World War and with the help of Felice but precise organic and “genre” reference. There is little point in
Casorati, Carol Rama began exhibiting in private galleries and was also concealing the fact that alone or piled in a heap, the tyres resemble
invited to the Biennale in Venice in 1948 and 1950 (she was to return entrails, phalluses and skin.
to the Biennale in 1993 for the XLV edition, directed by Achille Bonito In the l980s, there was a decisive and perhaps definitive return to
Oliva). In 1951, she took part in the VI Quadriennale, a national art figuration. The themes in part renew the Dorine and Appassionate
exhibition in Rome, to which she returned in 1955. of the 1940s, and the repertory was broadened to include new
At this time, however, her work changed. She dedicated herself to mythological protagonists, such as Keaton, painted on “recycled”
abstract research and joined the Movimento Arte Concreta, or MAC sheets of old surveying maps or designs of industrial machinery.
for short, which had many supporters in Turin, from Albino Galvano, In many cases, the figures are dressed in “tyres”, cut to take on a
artist and philosopher, to Paola Levi Montalcini, Adriano Parisot and figurative valence. The inner tubes thus become the Corona di Keaton,
Filippo Scroppo. At the end of the 1950s, Carol Rama abandoned but also the udders in Mucca Pazza. This last constitutes a pictorial
concretismo and renewed her interest in her themes of the l940s, cycle realised in a large number of variations in the late 1990s.
adopting a post-informal style. In the 1960s, this led to her Bricolages. An unexpected hardness and strength emerges, despite her age, in
These were compositions made by gluing glass eyes, false teeth, nails the latest works by Carol Rama of 2002-2003, many of which are
and animals’ claws to canvas and paper which was then painted with etchings produced with the Turinese printer, Franco Masoero. She also
patches and veils in an informal style laying stress on the medium, in paints large black or red bulls, leaving the bristles of the brush sticking
a manner vaguely reminiscent of Burn. These patches were not totally to the canvas to become a material element, but also realistically
without significance, however, because in many cases they resembled representative of the bristly hide of the powerful beast. Also from
stains of sperm or traces of organic material. 2002 comes Tonsure (Omaggio a Duchamp), a painting in which the
After drawing this cycle to a close, in the early 1970s Carol Rama famous French artist is shown from behind with the nape of his neck
began using the inner tubes of bicycle tyre to great critical and public shorn, revealing the famous five-pointed star, which in the picture
acclaim. These she simply dubbed “the tyres”. Some have likened becomes a comet flying into the air. It is a homage to an artist deemed
this work to Arte Povera, which was emerging in Turin in those years, by Carol Rama to have been her master.
but Carol Rama differs from Anselmo, Boetti, Merz, Paolini, Pistoletto, Guido Curto
Penone and Zorio because her work always imparts a subliminal

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