The Sad, Ecstatic Passions of Carol Rama

In 1945 in Turin, a solo exhibit of paintings by a young Italian artist was shut down. The works on display were propulsive with energy and psychologically driven: They depicted naked, often flower-crowned, women wagging their red tongues; defecating; copulating with snakes (or, perhaps deploying them as makeshift penises); and confined in psychiatric wards, wearing heels and nothing else. The delicate watercolors, tinged with pinks, greens, and crimsons, were interpretable as subtle stabs at Fascism and at societal responses to “deviant” female behavior. The police closed down the exhibit on opening day.

These paintings were the work of Carol Rama—and many of them no longer exist, eitherwould guide Rama’s aesthetic choices—she stopped making figurative pieces for years after, though hints of the human form remained in her abstractions—and would cement her reputation as an artist intensely interested in women as sexual beings, as medical curiosities, and as social symbols.