Lugano
Carol Rama (Olga Carolina Rama) was born in Turin on April 17, 1918. From an early age, she frequented the studio of the painter Gemma Vercelli (1906–1995), where she posed as a model and learned the basics of art by observing others at work. Drawing and painting soon became an essential and inescapable part of her life.
After completing her compulsory education, she attempted to enroll at the Academy of Fine Arts but did not finish her studies, feeling constrained by the rules of academic instruction. Instead, she chose the path of self-taught exploration, developing a personal style of painting, often using salvaged and recycled materials. By the age of eighteen, she had already mastered watercolor techniques and had begun experimenting with oil painting. Her subjects were mostly figures, objects, and situations drawn from her everyday life.
In 1942, she lost her father, to whom she was deeply attached. This event marked a difficult period, during which her artistic production declined. Around the mid-1940s, her work attracted the attention of Felice Casorati. Although Rama was never formally his student, Casorati recognized her talent and encouraged her to exhibit her work. In 1946, she participated in a group exhibition at the Galleria Del Bosco, followed the next year by her first solo show.
Carol Rama took part in the Venice Biennale and the Rome Quadriennale, and joined the Turin branch of the Movimento Arte Concreta (MAC). This was the only formal affiliation with an artistic movement throughout her long career. In the second half of the 1950s, her work shifted toward Informalism, gradually moving away from the modular, chromatic structures typical of her MAC period. She returned to denser color fields and more compact abstract compositions, which drew the interest of Giuseppe Bertasso, a renowned Turin gallerist and director of La Bussola gallery. In 1957, he organized her first solo exhibition there, the first of several over the following years.
The 1970s marked a distinctive phase in Rama’s life and artistic output. On monochrome surfaces, black or white, she began composing abstract works using segments of inner tubes, arranged in balanced compositions animated only by chromatic variations and traces of use.
Her rise to broader recognition came in 1985 with her first major public exhibition, curated by Lea Vergine. In 1993, Achille Bonito Oliva dedicated a solo show to her at the 45th Venice Biennale. Ten years later, in 2003, Carol Rama was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale, directed that year by Francesco Bonami. It was a recognition that sealed the significance of her radical and consistent artistic journey.
In the final years of her life, her works were exhibited in major international venues in Berlin, Paris, Dublin, and New York. Carol Rama passed away in her Turin home on September 24, 2015.
