In February 1942, Valenzi was sentenced to life imprisonment and forced labor in the Algerian fortress of Lambèse. The drawings of Lambèse constitute one of the most important cycles in Valenzi's artistic production, and thirty years later they will be translated into paintings or even ceramic objects, produced by companies in Vietri sul Mare under the supervision of Geppino Cilento. 

These images, as Claudio Strinati writes in the exhibition catalog "Maurizio Valenzi. Art and Politics," describe a humanity that is neither sad nor happy, in a sort of limbo, "of the suffering suspended amidst the world's evils, but who appear strangely untouched by misfortune."