Image: Carol Rama, I due Pini (Appassionata) (La signora Macor), 1939. © Archivio Carol Rama, Torino. Photo Pino Dell'Aquila
From 29 October 2026, Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, near Turin, will devote a room to Carol Rama for the first time. Titled Carol Rama: Capitolo 1 – Dorina e gli altri (Chapter 1 – Dorina and the Others) and curated by Marcella Beccaria, the presentation is part of a series of new installations at the museum that highlight Turin's role as a centre of artistic invention. The museum describes Rama as one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.
The display is open-ended, with no closing date announced. As its title indicates, it is conceived as a first chapter, and its point of departure is the artist's early work. The image chosen by the museum to introduce it is I due Pini (Appassionata) (La signora Macor), a watercolour from 1939, when Rama was in her early twenties.
Born in Turin in 1918, Carol Rama was largely self-taught and spent her life in the city. Her watercolours of the late 1930s and early 1940s, including the Appassionata series and the figure of Dorina, depicted women and bodies with a frankness that was unusual for the time, and her first solo exhibition, in Turin in 1945, was closed by the authorities. Over the following decades her work moved through abstraction, assemblage and the rubber-tyre compositions of the 1970s before returning to figuration. International recognition came late: she received the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the Venice Biennale in 2003. She died in Turin in 2015.
The room opens on the same day as other new presentations at Castello di Rivoli, among them Giulio Paolini: in due atti, also curated by Marcella Beccaria with Andrea Viliani, and Marisa Merz – La danza delle ore, organised with the Fondazione Merz and GAM – Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino.
