Intellectuals and creative minds alike:
Carol Rama’s network

To this day, a canvas hangs in Carol Rama’s studio in Turin resplendent with footprints in blue paint. It is testimony to the visitors she welcomed there between 1947 and 1953. They appended their signatures next to their footprints: Felice Casorati, neo-Classicist painter and an early patron of Rama, is considered one of the best-known Turin artists; Daphne Maugham-Casorati, his wife, was likewise a painter and the niece of British author William Somerset Maugham; Rama’s friends, artists Albino Galvano and Paola Levi-Montalcini were like her members of the “Movimento per l‘ Arte Concreta” artists movement. International guests likewise left their mark, such as Viennese artist and co-founder of Fantastic Realism, Ernst Fuchs.

In the post-War years, Rama also got to know the author Edoardo Sanguineti, who became one of her closest friends and creative companions. In the 1960s, Sanguineti coined the term bricolage to describe Rama’s works in which she combined painting with everyday objects such as doll’s eye, syringes, and cigarette holders. Sanguineti borrowed the term from Claude Lévi-Strauss’ book “La pensée sauvage“ (“The Savage Mind”), who deployed it to portray the improvising process used by indigenous cultures who lived ‘beyond civilization’. Sanguineti transfers the possibilities for associative work and free combinatorics to the work of his friend Carol Rama. In some of the bricolages there are handwritten lines from his poems, such as in the upper lefthand corner of “XCV – C’è un altro metodo, per finire“ (1967).

In her bricolage entitled “Omaggio a Carlo Mollino” (1969), which she dedicated to her friend Carlo Mollino, a creature with taxidermal eyes looks out at us. Across from Rama’s studio you can now view a city apartment for which the Italian architect and designer created an eccentric interior. In his profession in architecture, Mollino was involved among others in building Turin’s Teatro Regio and its Camera di Commercio. In his work, Mollino was often inspired by nature – he was an enthusiastic amateur pilot, skier, and hiker.