Carol Rama’s early watercolours are legendary and catapulted her into the centre of the avant-garde. In the series Appassionata (The Passionate) from 1936-1946, she painted dramatic scenes on paper employing delicate brushstrokes. Rama always worked from memory, which for her possessed a “very subtle, very erotic and very sensual flavour.” The artist was already emphasising her preference for subjects and situations that are generally met with rejection. The watercolours reveal an entire cosmos of bodies suspended between pain and pleasure. The controllability and simultaneous liberation of the body are the subject matter of this series. The naked figures reveal themselves in a moment of extreme vulnerability and yet radiate a great autonomy. They are rebels – like the artist herself. The watercolours were due to be exhibited in 1945, in Turin, but the exhibition was never to open due to allegations of obscenity. It was not until 1979 that the gallery owner and Rama’s supporter Liliana Dematteis presented the series at Galleria Martano in Turin.

Rama repeatedly linked the watercolours to her own biography. She was born in Turin, in 1918, as the youngest daughter of Marta and Amabile Rama. Her father’s company manufactured components for cars, initially enabling the family to lead a bourgeois life. During her adolescence, Rama witnessed her parents being committed to psychiatric clinics. Many of her works feature scenes from the I due Pini women’s clinic, where she visited her mother. The depiction of fragmented bodies is typical of these works. The disassembled body parts, dentures and shoes evoke prostheses – but also votive imagery. Later, her father’s company became bankrupt and he died in 1942, quite possibly by suicide. During her visits to the clinic, Rama’s resistance to socially imposed rules and constraints, gender categories and roles, and notions concerning female sexuality became more pronounced. She stated almost admonishingly: “Madness is not something that is foreign to us. To be too certain that you are on the right side is also a kind of madness.”