"Da uno a dieci"

ALIGHIERO BOETTI

Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994)-or Alighiero e Boetti as he signed himself beginning in 1971-was born in Turin, Italy, where he made his debut as part of Arte Povera in January 1967. In 1972 he moved to Rome, a context more akin to his predilection for the Global South. Already the previous year he had discovered Afghanistan and initiated the artistic work he entrusts to Afghan embroiderers, including Maps, the colorful planispheres he would repurpose throughout the years as a register of the world's political changes. A conceptual artist, versatile and kaleidoscopic, he multiplies the types of works whose execution - in some cases - is delegated with very precise rules to other subjects and other hands, pandering to the principle of 'necessity and chance': thus the ballpoint pen (blues, blacks, reds, greens) in which the dotted fielding sets the stage for language; thus the embroideries of letters, small or large, and multicolored; or the Tutto, dense puzzles in which heterogeneous silhouettes including silhouettes of objects and animals, images from magazines and printed paper, and much more, really 'everything'. Another area of Boetti's work, unmistakably his own hand, offers in the early 1970s many 'exercises' on squared paper, based on musical or mathematical rhythms; later on paper, light compositions in which ranks of animals flow mindful of Etruscan and Pompeian decoration. Time, its fascinating and inescapable passing, is perhaps the unifying theme of Boetti's typological and iconographic plurality. Alighiero Boetti has exhibited in the most emblematic exhibitions of his generation, from When attitudes become form (1969) to Contemporanea (1973), from Identité italienne (1981) to The italian metamorphosis 1943-1968 (1994). He is repeatedly present at the Venice Biennale, with a solo room in the 1990 edition, a posthumous tribute in 2001 and with an extensive exhibition at the Fondazione Cini in the recent 2017 edition. Significant exhibitions in recent years include the major retrospective Game Plan in three prestigious venues (MOMA in New York, the Tate in London, and the Reina Sofia in Madrid). Of the large body of works many are held in various Italian and international museum venues, including Centre Pompidou in Paris, Stedelijk Museum, MOCA in Los Angeles. His work as well as his figure as an artist have strongly influenced the next generation and today's artists in Italy and around the world. (Biography taken from the Alighiero Boetti Archive website).