Alighiero e Boetti
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Originale
The small numbers written on squared paper introduce both at formal and content levels the importance of numbers and their central function in Boetti's work. The stamp with the writing “original” marks the specificity and originality not only of this specific work but the entire artistic work presented in this book.
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Iter-vallo
The work is hand-made with cardboard cut and plaited with tissue paper. The structure recalls a chess or draught board, by conceptually introducing the idea of game in the artist's work, which plays a relevant role in the artist's practice and aesthetics.
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AB : AW = MD : L
The silk-screen reproduces a variant of the work Jackie Kennedy by Andy Warhol. Boetti changes the features of the portrait by drawing with a pencil a beard on the woman's face. He uses Marcel Duchamp's irony when he painted moustaches on Leonardo's Mona Lisa. And this is precisely the game presented in the math formula found in the title equation: Alighiero Boetti : Andy Warhol = Marcel Duchamp : Leonardo. The artist's interest for Andy Warhol and Duchamp transpires here.
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Rosso Gilera 60 12 32
Between 1965 and 1969 Boetti became interested in applied materials used in the industries in Northern Italy and made several works by experimenting with new materials like for example artificial colours identified and named after prestigious industrial brands like Guzzi and Gilera motorcycles.
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Rosso Guzzi 60 13 05
Between 1965 and 1969 Boetti became interested in applied materials used in the industries in Northern Italy and made several works by experimenting with new materials like for example artificial colours identified and named after prestigious industrial brands like Guzzi and Gilera motorcycles.
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Raddoppiare dimezzando
The work is composed of a sheet of paper cut in half and introduces, also in the play on words, one of the main research areas at the centre of Boetti's work: “In looking back at the things that I've made, I realise that I have always worked on half or double things, and the missing unit, is never there. It's either half or double.”
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Gemelli
The photograph of Gemelli was made in 1968 through the photomontage of two following shots; the artist is portrayed in Corso Peschiera in Turin, at first on the left side of the road, and the next on the right side.
This is an emblematic image, a double portrait: the artist, while taking by the hand another himself who is at the same time quite different from him, “reflects” about the notion of identity and the relation with complementarity.
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Strumento musicale
The photograph resumes the theme of duality found in Gemelli; this feature is identified here in the artist's portrait holding in his hands a musical instrument with two necks, representing the visible mirroring of the twins' image and later of his name. From 1972, in fact, the artist started separating his name from his surname in his signature by adding the conjunction “e” (Alighiero e Boetti).
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Shaman/Showman
The photomontage draws inspiration from the etching Le Grand Symbole Kabbalistique du Sohar found in the book Historie de la Magie by Éliphas Lévi (1860), a scholar of esoterism. The artist has replaced the face of the man depicted in the etching with his portrait. The duplicated and upside down image was used for the exhibition “Shaman/Showman” at Galleria De Nieubourg of Franco Toselli in Milan (1968).
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Granbacino
Granbacino, from the same year of Gemelli, is composed of two photographs joined together in a game where the perspective of the feet leads us to imagine that legs and feet are infinitely distant from the remaining part of the body.
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Scrivere con la sinistra è disegnare
Writing is a recurrent feature in Boetti's art. In this work the central theme of opposites and double returns through the use of the left hand in Boetti's artistic practice. In fact the artist made many works with his left hand, as for example the work Gary Gilmore from 1977, now in Collezione Maramotti, a diptych split into word and image, where the artist “re-wrote” with his left hand the last interview of the American killer.
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Ciò che sempre parla in silenzio è il corpo
The use of the left hand in Boetti's modus operandi is shown in this work as well, where the the sentence “what always speaks in silence is the body” was written with both hands by emphasising in this way its specular value: language, made of signs and letters, is this time the body language.
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Ciò che sempre parla in silenzio è il corpo
The use of the left hand in Boetti's modus operandi is shown in this work as well, where the the sentence “what always speaks in silence is the body” was written with both hands by emphasising in this way its specular value: language, made of signs and letters, is this time the body language.
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San Bernardino
The photograph was used as an invitation card for the exhibition made in 1969 at Galleria Sperone. The shot was made one year before by Robert Cagnoli at San Bernardino in Cinque Terre. The image was used for the book Insicuro Noncurante and, starting in 1977, for a cycle of works on paper.
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Pari e dispari
In the early Seventies Boetti worked on the production of geometrical drawings made in ink on squared paper sheets by filling in the squares; works of this king, like Pari e dispari, reproduce different mathematical patterns.
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Pack
The image, made in black ink, draws its origin from the cracks of the mud left at the bottom of a pail and visually recalls the works of the Italian designer Enzo Mari from the Fifties.
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16 dicembre 2040 - 11 luglio 2023
The silk-screens from two embroideries on fabric made by a craftswoman during Boetti's first journey to Afghanistan in the spring of 1971. The writings “16 December 2040” and “11 July 2023” refer fatalistically to the hundred-year anniversary of the date of birth and to the hypothetical date of death of the artist. They show the will to use the artisanal “language” of the embroidery, made by other people, to give form to an idea created by the artist.
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16 dicembre 2040 - 11 luglio 2023
The silk-screens from two embroideries on fabric made by a craftswoman during Boetti's first journey to Afghanistan in the spring of 1971. The writings “16 December 2040” and “11 July 2023” refer fatalistically to the hundred-year anniversary of the date of birth and to the hypothetical date of death of the artist. They show the will to use the artisanal “language” of the embroidery, made by other people, to give form to an idea created by the artist.
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Ordine e disordine
The silk-screen is drawn from an embroidery on fabric where the words “order” and “disorder” were made in Alighiero Boetti's studio, on pieces of fabrics of different colours. The following stage of the embroidery of several pieces was assigned to Afghan embroiderers creating variations in size and colours. For this reason the artist defined this kind of work “multiple-single”.
The concepts of order and disorder are at the basis of many works by Boetti, as he often repeated: “It is just a question of knowing the rules of the game: whoever does not know them will never see the order governing over things, like when looking at a starry night whoever does not know the star order will see only confusion, whereas an astronomer would have a very clear view of things.”
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Territori occupati - Sabato 10 giugno 1967
The table highlights the artist's interest for geography and the political events of his time. This is one of the first on this issue from which the series Mappe was later developed. The image was made by tracing over the contours of the Sinai peninsula, at the time an occupied territory, as it appeared on the front page of the daily La Stampa: “I've used that map as it appeared on the front page of La Stampa. I understood that every time a shape of that kind appeared on the front page it meant that something important had happened... Therefore I've been following every political changes since 1971, the year of the creation of Bangladesh”, whose flag, with its bright colours, is reproduced in the print titled Bangla-Desh.
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Bangla-Desh
The table highlights the artist's interest for geography and the political events of his time. This is one of the first on this issue from which the series Mappe was later developed. The image was made by tracing over the contours of the Sinai peninsula, at the time an occupied territory, as it appeared on the front page of the daily La Stampa: “I've used that map as it appeared on the front page of La Stampa. I understood that every time a shape of that kind appeared on the front page it meant that something important had happened... Therefore I've been following every political changes since 1971, the year of the creation of Bangladesh”, whose flag, with its bright colours, is reproduced in the print titled Bangla-Desh.
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Colpo di Stato
A recurrent art form in Boetti in the early Seventies is the use of letters and postage stamps: “It is in any case a way to take things from reality, all the things have had a beginning, although small and puny, in reality and a detachment from it. When instead I want to do something precisely for painting, then I make stamps, it is like working on canvas […] The works I call formal are so because I've invented the form and I'm very proud because I was not a born painter or sculptor. There is invention there: the practical reality in the envelope and the address replace the boring discourse of the painting.”
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Contatore
The silk-screen consists in the image of a black and blue meter and its numbers.
Contatore makes reference to a game consisting in watching the moment when the numbers on the car speedometer change from nine to zero. The work marks the end of a numerical series to move onto its turning to zero, and therefore to a new beginning, as emblematically shown in the typescript Uno a Zero: Inizio di una lotta.
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Uno a Zero: Inizio di una lotta
The silk-screen consists in the image of a black and blue meter and its numbers.
Contatore makes reference to a game consisting in watching the moment when the numbers on the car speedometer change from nine to zero. The work marks the end of a numerical series to move onto its turning to zero, and therefore to a new beginning, as emblematically shown in the typescript Uno a Zero: Inizio di una lotta.
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3x3=9
The works 3x3=9 and Quattro operazioni reveal the central role, in Boetti's work, of mathematics and numbers, in their real, symbolic and poetic dimension: “The number is the only real entity existing in the universe. Numbers are the only identities existing autonomously […] Each has its own individuality, its own presence; I don't know, 3 is Mister 3, 2 recalls the idea of dualism, the double, 1 is the unit, 4 the earth, the four walls, 5 the pentagon, and the concept of war comes into mind, terrible, 6 the hexagon, and bees come to mind….”
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Quattro operazioni
The works 3x3=9 and Quattro operazioni reveal the central role, in Boetti's work, of mathematics and numbers, in their real, symbolic and poetic dimension: “The number is the only real entity existing in the universe. Numbers are the only identities existing autonomously […] Each has its own individuality, its own presence; I don't know, 3 is Mister 3, 2 recalls the idea of dualism, the double, 1 is the unit, 4 the earth, the four walls, 5 the pentagon, and the concept of war comes into mind, terrible, 6 the hexagon, and bees come to mind….”
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Mettere al mondo il mondo
The artist writes on the left of a squared paper sheet, with blue and black ink, the letters of the alphabet vertically and next to them he draws commas which are related to the letters and enable us to decode the sentence corresponding to the title: “bringing the world into the world”. The work belongs to the series of lavori a biro, through which Boetti created a language code to give shape to his thinking via the use of letters.
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Ononimo
The work, made with black ballpoint pen on paper, refers in the title to the combination of the words “anonymous” and “homonymous”. What is striking in this work, beside the image of the comma, symbol of temporary and continuity, is the use of the ballpoint pen to fill the paper: “…and then there is the fact of drawing and covering, as in the ballpoint pen works. They are all a way to draw, each has its own, its certainty, its mood, its shading. And each has its presence, which lies outside any possibility of choice, each its body, its fullness, the sheet has also been physically filled, it is a physical matter. The works with the ballpoint pen are concentrated of time; physically they make me feel like the time has expanded, hugely..”
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Cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione
The work derives from a pencil tracing on squared paper and marks a turning point in Boetti's work, starting from 1969. The artist spoke of this work with these words: "I left everything completely as it was and started from scratch with a pencil and a sheet of paper. I took this squared paper and made a painting called Cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione. It consists in remaking the little squares. This means re-starting for me."
With this work Boetti started his serial works based on the idea of tracing.
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Venticinque
This work as well, made in pencil on paper, finds its interpretation key in the artist's words: “For me the experience of the little squares, that you or other people may see in a completely different way, has been a non communicable but fantastic experience, because I found myself facing - let us say - a paternal structure […] From these drawings, the problem of having to fill them, a sort of rhythm has emerged, I could have spent my entire life with those little squares.”