Carol Rama (1918–2015) is one of those outstanding female artists of modernism who, in spite of impres­sive and multi­fac­eted oeuvres, achieve fame late in their career. Sexu­ality, passion, disease, death—Rama dedi­cated her art to the great human themes and funda­mental expe­ri­ences. Her depic­tions from the 1930s of female lust paved the way for today’s femi­nist art. Inde­pen­dent of artistic schools and group­ings, the self-taught talent created over the course of 70 years an uncon­ven­tional and highly personal body of work. Rama’s work defies simple cate­go­riza­tion and is distin­guished by an enthu­si­astic delight in exper­i­men­ta­tion. From her early days as an artist in the 1930s through to the early 2000s, she managed to rein­vent her style every ten years or so with new groups of works, while always remaining true to herself.

An adept icon­o­clast, she pushed the bound­aries of artistic and social conven­tions in terms of both form and content. Rama spent her long life in Turin, in an apart­ment that also served as her studio on the top floor of 15 Via Napione that she had designed as a total work of art in its own right. Well-connected, she gath­ered around her a circle of intel­lec­tuals and artists and yet for a long time remained more or less unknown outside Italy. It was not until she had reached an advanced age that she was recog­nized with inter­na­tional survey exhi­bi­tions and pres­ti­gious awards including the Golden Lion for Life­time Achieve­ment at the 2003 Venice Bien­nale.

Inno­v­a­tive and extra­or­di­nary. Uncom­pro­mising and uncon­ven­tional. The great unknown of modernism – Carol Rama. To accom­pany the exhi­bi­tion, the Schirn is offering a Digi­to­rial that offers valu­able back­ground infor­ma­tion, cultural and art histor­ical contexts of the exhi­bi­tion. This free-of-charge digital educa­tional offering can be accessed in German and English. For Smart­phone, Tablet and Desktop.

(Curators: Martina Wein­hart, Schirn Kunsthalle Frank­furt)