Free-spirited, nonconformist, provocative: Carol Rama (Turin, 1918-2015) was one of the most independent and radical artists of the twentieth century. Internationally acclaimed for her exploration of the body, desire, illness, and identity, she anticipated many of the central questions of contemporary art.

From October 3, 2026, to February 14, 2027, Palazzo de’ Rossi in Pistoia pays tribute to Rama in the latest installment of In Visita, a project by Fondazione Pistoia Musei, supported by Fondazione Caript. The series spotlights key artists of the last century and today by presenting one or more works within the Collezioni del Novecento, the permanent display devoted to artists who worked in Pistoia. The opening is free and open to the public.

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This fifth edition of In Visita brings Rama back to Pistoia more than sixty years after her groundbreaking 1965 solo show in the Sala Ghibellina of the Palazzo Comunale, the first ever devoted to her by a public museum. The exhibition features seven exceptional works spanning pivotal moments in her career from the 1950s through the 1970s. Six come from the Gallerie d’Italia - Intesa Sanpaolo collections, and one is on loan from a private collection. That work, Bricolage R 4, was also shown in the 1965 Pistoia exhibition.

The project is curated by Monica Preti, general director of Fondazione Pistoia Musei, and Annamaria Iacuzzi, curator of the Collezioni del Novecento. It is presented in partnership with Intesa Sanpaolo and in collaboration with the City of Pistoia / Civic Museums and the Archivio Carol Rama.

 

The show opens in the 1950s, when Rama, drawn to the possibilities of abstraction, joined the Movimento Arte Concreta (MAC). It then follows her development of a distinctive Informal style in the “Bricolage” works of the following decade. It also includes her experiments with bicycle inner tubes in the series Luogo e segni and Smentire il bianco, along with a work in stitched thread on fabric from the early-1970s “diagrams” series.

Senza titolo (1952) and Composizione 71 (1955) reflect Rama’s work in abstraction with the Turin branch of MAC, which took a more open and experimental approach than the geometric abstraction of the Milanese Concrete artists. Composizione 71 is displayed alongside the abstract work of Pistoia-born artists Gualtiero Nativi and Mario Nigro, part of the permanent Collezioni del Novecento, inviting a comparison of form and artistic approach.

Senza titolo (1961), an oil painting with mixed-media inclusions, captures Rama’s Informal phase, when the painted surface began to take in heterogeneous materials and the relationship between paint and matter was steadily redefined. Salvaged objects and clumps of vaguely organic material enrich the canvas, foreshadowing the experiments of the years to come.

It was around this time that the poet and critic Edoardo Sanguineti took an interest in Rama’s work. In 1964, on the occasion of her solo show at Galleria Stampatori in Turin, he coined the term “Bricolage” for this group of strongly material works. In the summer of 1965, he presented her first solo exhibition in a public institution, at the Sala Ghibellina of Pistoia’s Museo Civico. His interest continued in the years that followed, and the Pistoia show remains a key moment in that story. Among the works on view then was Senza titolo (Bricolage R 4), now displayed once again thanks to a private loan. On its canvas, the painted “stain” and the “object,” a scrap of everyday reality embedded in the painting, are locked in a tense dialogue.

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In the mid-1970s, Rama created Luogo e segni, a series of 35 works in varying formats and approaches. Using large black canvas tarpaulins, she applied inner tubes in strict quadrangular patterns, building on the experiments of her earlier series Fase dal nero and Smentire il bianco. In Luogo e segni (1974), the example on view in Pistoia, the surface is further divided by square fields created through subtraction, by abrading the canvas. Addition and subtraction work together to define the pictorial space.

Between 1972 and 1974, Rama also focused on a group of works in which sewing thread becomes the structural element. Fixed onto white fabric or black tarpaulin canvas, the thread traces paths reminiscent of medical diagnostic charts, as in Senza titolo (1974).

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In Visita is a project of Fondazione Pistoia Musei, made possible by the support of Fondazione Caript, in partnership with Intesa Sanpaolo, and with the backing of the companies in the Pistoia Musei Corporate Membership.

Throughout the run of In Visita | Carol Rama, the museum will offer guided tours, talks, and programs for schools, families, and adults.

The exhibition is accompanied by a book published by Gli Ori-Pistoia. It includes an introduction by curators Monica Preti and Annamaria Iacuzzi, an essay by Iacuzzi on Rama’s 1965 solo show in Pistoia, and a critical contribution by Maria Grazia Messina. The volume offers fresh perspectives on the artist’s career and, drawing on previously unpublished material, reconstructs the historical and critical context of that landmark exhibition.