Alighiero Boetti
Encyclopedia
Alighiero Fabrizio Boetti known as Alighiero e Boetti (December 16, 1940 – February 24, 1994) was an Italian
conceptual artist
, considered to be a member of the art movement Arte Povera
.
He is most famous for a series of embroidered maps of the world, Mappa, created between 1971 and his death in 1994. Boetti's work was typified by his notion of 'twinning', leading him to add 'e' (and) between his names, 'stimulating a dialectic exchange between these two selves'.
, to Corrado Boetti, a lawyer, and Adelina Marchisio, a violinist. Boetti abandoned his studies at the business school of the University of Turin
to work as an artist. Already in his early years, he had profound and wide-ranging theoretical interests and studied works on such diverse topics as philosophy, alchemy and esoterics. Among his the preferred authors of his youth were the German writer Hermann Hesse
and the Swiss-German painter and Bauhaus
teacher Paul Klee
. Boetti also had a continuing interest in mathematics and music.
At seventeen, Boetti discovered the works of the German painter Wols
and the cut canvases of Argentine-Italian artist Lucio Fontana
. Boetti's own works of his late teen years, however, are oil paintings somewhat reminiscent of the Russian painter Nicolas de Staël
. At age twenty, Boetti moved to Paris to study engraving. In 1962, while in France he met Annemarie Sauzeau, whom he was to marry in 1964 and with whom he had two children, Matteo (1967) and Agata (1972). From 1974 to 1976, he travelled to Guatemala, Ethiopia, Sudan. In 1975 he went back to New York.
Active as an artist from the early 1960s to his premature death in 1994, Boetti developed a significant body of diverse works that were often both poetic and pleasing to the eye while at the same time steeped in his diverse theoretical interests and influenced by his extensive travels.
Boetti was passionate about non-western cultures, particularly of central and southern Asia, and travelled to Afghanistan
and Pakistan
numerous times in the 1970s and 1980s, although Afghanistan became inaccessible to him following the Soviet invasion in 1979.
He died in Rome in 1994 at the age of 53.
, or poor art, a term subsequently widely propagated by Italian art critic Germano Celant
.
Boetti continued to work with a wide array of materials, tools, and techniques, including ball pens (biro) and even the postal system. Some of Boetti's artistic strategies are considered typical for Arte Povera, namely the use the most modest of materials and techniques, to take art off its pedestal of attributed "dignity". Boetti also took a keen interest in the relationship between chance and order, in various systems of classification (grids, maps, etc.), and non-Western traditions and cultural practices, influenced by his Afghanistan and Pakistan travels.
An example of his Arte Povera work is Yearly Lamp (1966), a light bulb in a wooden box, which randomly switches itself on for eleven seconds each year. This work focuses both on the transformative powers of energy, and on the possibilities and limitations of chance - the likelihood of a viewer being present at the moment of illumination is remote. In 1967, Boetti produced the piece Manifesto, a poster listing the names of artists that make up Boetti’s creative background.
In the late 1969s, Boetti also made monochrome paintings in which he sprayed these paints on metal or masonite supports, recording the numbers and fanciful names of the colours in cork letters. Different thematic groups emerged as Boetti combined their names with other names, race track names for instance (Oro Longchamp and Verde Ascot) or distant place names (Rosso Palermo and Beige Sahara).
In 1969, he returned to the two-dimensionality of paper with Cimento dell’armonia e dell’invenzione and with the Lavori postali series, based on the scanning of time and on the laws of mathematical permutation. By using an existing system (the post office), Boetti incorporated the element of chance in his work. One of his first postal pieces, Untitled (Victoria Boogie Woogie), 1972, is made up of 42 framed postal collages, each containing 120 self-addressed, stamped envelopes of seven stamps per envelope. The letters were all mailed by the artist from different cities to himself in Turin. The number 5040, or (120 x 42 panels), or (7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1), was the number of permutations that could be derived from a sequencing of the seven Italian stamps, totaling 200 lire of postage.
Boetti thus often collaborated with other people, both artists and non-artists, giving them significant freedom in their contributions to his works. For instance, one of the better known types of his works consists of colored letters embroidered in grids ("arazzi", meaning wall hangings or tapestries) on canvases of varying sizes, the letters upon closer inspection reading as short phrases in Italian, for instance Ordine e Disordine ("Order and Disorder" or: "Order is Disorder") or Fuso Ma Non Confuso ("Mixed but not mixed up"), or similar truisms and wordplays. To create these pictures, Boetti worked with artisan embroiderers in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to whom he gave his designs but increasingly handed over the process of selecting and combining the colors and thus deciding the final look of the work.
Similarly, in the lavori biro (ball pen paintings), he would invite friends and acquaintances, to fill large colored sections of the work by ball pen, typically alternating between a man and a woman. Boetti made his first ballpoint ink drawings in 1972–73 and continued through the late 1980s. Many of the works in this series contain puzzles, puns and linguistic codes, wherein letters of the alphabet run horizontally or vertically along the margin of the sheet. I sei sensi (The Six Senses), 1973, is part of a series of drawings done in code. An alphabet is laid out on the left side of the paper, forming an index. Commas, laid out horizontally, correspond to each letter of the alphabet. The “meaning” of the piece may be read by following the progressively arranged commas in relation to the letters. In the case of I sei sensi, Boetti has spelled out in Italian the five senses—vedere (to see), gustare (to taste), toccare (to touch), dire (to hear), odarare (to smell)—and one added by the artist: pensare (to think).
His most ambitious project is a large embroidered piece titled Classificazione dei mille fiumi piu lunghi del mondo (Classification of the thousand longest rivers in the world (1977). In characteristically blocky letters, this work spells the names of the world's 1,000 longest rivers in descending order of length. It is based on a list that required more than seven years of research by Boetti and his first wife, Anne Marie Sauzeau, an art critic, and that is known to many scientists as the Boetti List.
In his Aerei (1977), or “Airplanes” series, the artist leaves as negative space line drawings of modern and historical airplanes. Originally culled from popular magazine sources, these often mural-size images construct an illusionary space of action and movement.
The interest for the media brought him to collaborate with the daily newspaper “Il Manifesto”, published in Rome, for which, everyday for a year, he executed a drawing, thus accomplishing his idea of a serial work for the general public. In 1983 he created the series of pencil drawings traced from the covers of popular magazines. The same year he created the large wall mosaic in white ceramic for the external façade of the Art Gallery of the California State University, Northridge
, for which he used cardboards with drawings made by the students following his indications.
Perhaps best known is Boetti's series of large embroidered maps of the world, called simply Mappa. He pondered the idea of the first Mappa during his second voyage to Afghanistan in 1971, resulting in a series of woven world maps entitled Territori Occupati. Between 1971 and 1979 he set up a hotel in Kabul
as an art project and created large colourful embroideries, the most famous of these were the Mappa, world maps in which each country features the design of its national flag. The maps delineate the political boundaries of the countries; some nations, such as Israel, are not represented because the Taliban regime of Afghanistan did not then recognize their existence. The border texts contain dates or details relative to the work’s production, Boetti’s signature and sayings, as well as excerpts from Sufi poetry.
Embroidered by artisan
s in Afghanistan
and Pakistan
, the maps were the result of a collaborative process leaving the design to the geopolitical realities of the time, and the choice of colours to the artisans responsible for the embroidery. The embroidery of each map normally took one to two years and, in some cases, much longer due to external events. The invasion of Afghanistan by Russian troops in 1979 shifted production from Kabul to Peshawar
in Pakistan, where the group of Afghan women had taken refuge. It also halted production completely until 1982, with only a few maps being made between 1982-1985.
A chief example of this series, Mappa del Mondo, 1989 ("Map of the World, 1989"), is on view in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (see Key Works).
to participate in the seminal exhibition "Live in your Head. When Attitudes become Forms" in 1969. Boetti had his first US solo exhibition in New York at John Weber Gallery in 1973. In 1978, he held an anthological exhibition curated by Jean Christophe Ammann at the Kunsthalle Basel
that featured historical works alongside more recent ones. He continued to show throughout Italy and the United States until his premature death. He was the subject of a retrospective in 1992 that traveled to Bonn and Münster, Germany, and Lucerne, Switzerland. He has been honored post-humously with several large-scale exhibitions, most notably at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna
, Rome (1996); the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Vienna in 1997; the Museum für Moderne Kunst
in Frankfurt am Main in 1998; Whitechapel Gallery
, London (1999); and Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein
, Vaduz. The artist took part in Documenta
s 5 (1972) and 7 (1982) and the Venice Biennale
(1978, 1980, 1986, 1990, 1995). In 2001, the Venice Pavillon was completely dedicated to Alighiero e Boetti’s work.
London for £1,833,250 ($2,757,208).
Alighiero Boetti is represented by Sprüth Magers Berlin London
.
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
conceptual artist
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
, considered to be a member of the art movement Arte Povera
Arte Povera
Arte Povera is a modern art movement. The term was introduced in Italy during the period of upheaval at the end of the 1960s, when artists were taking a radical stance. Artists began attacking the values of established institutions of government, industry, and culture, and even questioning whether...
.
He is most famous for a series of embroidered maps of the world, Mappa, created between 1971 and his death in 1994. Boetti's work was typified by his notion of 'twinning', leading him to add 'e' (and) between his names, 'stimulating a dialectic exchange between these two selves'.
Biography
Alighiero Boetti was born in TurinTurin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
, to Corrado Boetti, a lawyer, and Adelina Marchisio, a violinist. Boetti abandoned his studies at the business school of the University of Turin
University of Turin
The University of Turin is a university in the city of Turin in the Piedmont region of north-western Italy...
to work as an artist. Already in his early years, he had profound and wide-ranging theoretical interests and studied works on such diverse topics as philosophy, alchemy and esoterics. Among his the preferred authors of his youth were the German writer Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature...
and the Swiss-German painter and Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...
teacher Paul Klee
Paul Klee
Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...
. Boetti also had a continuing interest in mathematics and music.
At seventeen, Boetti discovered the works of the German painter Wols
Wols
Wols was the pseudonym of Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze , a German painter and photographer predominantly active in France....
and the cut canvases of Argentine-Italian artist Lucio Fontana
Lucio Fontana
Lucio Fontana was an Italian painter, sculptor and theorist of Argentine birth. He was mostly known as the founder of Spatialism and his ties to Arte Povera.-Early life:...
. Boetti's own works of his late teen years, however, are oil paintings somewhat reminiscent of the Russian painter Nicolas de Staël
Nicolas de Staël
Nicolas de Staël was a painter known for his use of a thick impasto and his highly abstract landscape painting...
. At age twenty, Boetti moved to Paris to study engraving. In 1962, while in France he met Annemarie Sauzeau, whom he was to marry in 1964 and with whom he had two children, Matteo (1967) and Agata (1972). From 1974 to 1976, he travelled to Guatemala, Ethiopia, Sudan. In 1975 he went back to New York.
Active as an artist from the early 1960s to his premature death in 1994, Boetti developed a significant body of diverse works that were often both poetic and pleasing to the eye while at the same time steeped in his diverse theoretical interests and influenced by his extensive travels.
Boetti was passionate about non-western cultures, particularly of central and southern Asia, and travelled to Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
and Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
numerous times in the 1970s and 1980s, although Afghanistan became inaccessible to him following the Soviet invasion in 1979.
He died in Rome in 1994 at the age of 53.
Arte Povera
From 1963 to 1965, Boetti began to create works out of then unusual materials such as plaster, masonite, plexiglass, light fixtures and other industrial materials. His first solo show was in 1967, at the Turin gallery of Christian Stein. Later that year participated in an exhibition at Galleria La Bertesca in the Italian city of Genoa, with a group of other Italian artists that referred to their works as Arte PoveraArte Povera
Arte Povera is a modern art movement. The term was introduced in Italy during the period of upheaval at the end of the 1960s, when artists were taking a radical stance. Artists began attacking the values of established institutions of government, industry, and culture, and even questioning whether...
, or poor art, a term subsequently widely propagated by Italian art critic Germano Celant
Germano Celant
Germano Celant is an Italian art historian, critic and curator, mostly renewed for being one of the founding members of the "Arte Povera" movement in 1967....
.
Boetti continued to work with a wide array of materials, tools, and techniques, including ball pens (biro) and even the postal system. Some of Boetti's artistic strategies are considered typical for Arte Povera, namely the use the most modest of materials and techniques, to take art off its pedestal of attributed "dignity". Boetti also took a keen interest in the relationship between chance and order, in various systems of classification (grids, maps, etc.), and non-Western traditions and cultural practices, influenced by his Afghanistan and Pakistan travels.
An example of his Arte Povera work is Yearly Lamp (1966), a light bulb in a wooden box, which randomly switches itself on for eleven seconds each year. This work focuses both on the transformative powers of energy, and on the possibilities and limitations of chance - the likelihood of a viewer being present at the moment of illumination is remote. In 1967, Boetti produced the piece Manifesto, a poster listing the names of artists that make up Boetti’s creative background.
In the late 1969s, Boetti also made monochrome paintings in which he sprayed these paints on metal or masonite supports, recording the numbers and fanciful names of the colours in cork letters. Different thematic groups emerged as Boetti combined their names with other names, race track names for instance (Oro Longchamp and Verde Ascot) or distant place names (Rosso Palermo and Beige Sahara).
In 1969, he returned to the two-dimensionality of paper with Cimento dell’armonia e dell’invenzione and with the Lavori postali series, based on the scanning of time and on the laws of mathematical permutation. By using an existing system (the post office), Boetti incorporated the element of chance in his work. One of his first postal pieces, Untitled (Victoria Boogie Woogie), 1972, is made up of 42 framed postal collages, each containing 120 self-addressed, stamped envelopes of seven stamps per envelope. The letters were all mailed by the artist from different cities to himself in Turin. The number 5040, or (120 x 42 panels), or (7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1), was the number of permutations that could be derived from a sequencing of the seven Italian stamps, totaling 200 lire of postage.
1972-1994
Boetti disassociated himself from the Arte Povera movement in 1972 and moved to Rome, without, however, completely abandoning some of its democratic, anti-elitist, strategies. In 1973, he renamed himself as a dual persona Alighiero e Boetti (“Alighiero and Boetti”) reflecting the opposing factors presented in his work: the individual and society, error and perfection, order and disorder. Boetti often conceived of an idea for a work of art but left its design and execution to others, recruiting other people to carry out his concepts. Already in his double-portrait I Gemelli begun in 1968 and published as a postcard, Boetti had altered photographs so that he appeared to be holding the hand of his identical twin.Boetti thus often collaborated with other people, both artists and non-artists, giving them significant freedom in their contributions to his works. For instance, one of the better known types of his works consists of colored letters embroidered in grids ("arazzi", meaning wall hangings or tapestries) on canvases of varying sizes, the letters upon closer inspection reading as short phrases in Italian, for instance Ordine e Disordine ("Order and Disorder" or: "Order is Disorder") or Fuso Ma Non Confuso ("Mixed but not mixed up"), or similar truisms and wordplays. To create these pictures, Boetti worked with artisan embroiderers in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to whom he gave his designs but increasingly handed over the process of selecting and combining the colors and thus deciding the final look of the work.
Similarly, in the lavori biro (ball pen paintings), he would invite friends and acquaintances, to fill large colored sections of the work by ball pen, typically alternating between a man and a woman. Boetti made his first ballpoint ink drawings in 1972–73 and continued through the late 1980s. Many of the works in this series contain puzzles, puns and linguistic codes, wherein letters of the alphabet run horizontally or vertically along the margin of the sheet. I sei sensi (The Six Senses), 1973, is part of a series of drawings done in code. An alphabet is laid out on the left side of the paper, forming an index. Commas, laid out horizontally, correspond to each letter of the alphabet. The “meaning” of the piece may be read by following the progressively arranged commas in relation to the letters. In the case of I sei sensi, Boetti has spelled out in Italian the five senses—vedere (to see), gustare (to taste), toccare (to touch), dire (to hear), odarare (to smell)—and one added by the artist: pensare (to think).
His most ambitious project is a large embroidered piece titled Classificazione dei mille fiumi piu lunghi del mondo (Classification of the thousand longest rivers in the world (1977). In characteristically blocky letters, this work spells the names of the world's 1,000 longest rivers in descending order of length. It is based on a list that required more than seven years of research by Boetti and his first wife, Anne Marie Sauzeau, an art critic, and that is known to many scientists as the Boetti List.
In his Aerei (1977), or “Airplanes” series, the artist leaves as negative space line drawings of modern and historical airplanes. Originally culled from popular magazine sources, these often mural-size images construct an illusionary space of action and movement.
The interest for the media brought him to collaborate with the daily newspaper “Il Manifesto”, published in Rome, for which, everyday for a year, he executed a drawing, thus accomplishing his idea of a serial work for the general public. In 1983 he created the series of pencil drawings traced from the covers of popular magazines. The same year he created the large wall mosaic in white ceramic for the external façade of the Art Gallery of the California State University, Northridge
California State University, Northridge
California State University, Northridge is a public university in Northridge, a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, California, United States....
, for which he used cardboards with drawings made by the students following his indications.
Mappa
Kabul
Kabul , spelt Caubul in some classic literatures, is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. It is also the capital of the Kabul Province, located in the eastern section of Afghanistan...
as an art project and created large colourful embroideries, the most famous of these were the Mappa, world maps in which each country features the design of its national flag. The maps delineate the political boundaries of the countries; some nations, such as Israel, are not represented because the Taliban regime of Afghanistan did not then recognize their existence. The border texts contain dates or details relative to the work’s production, Boetti’s signature and sayings, as well as excerpts from Sufi poetry.
Embroidered by artisan
Artisan
An artisan is a skilled manual worker who makes items that may be functional or strictly decorative, including furniture, clothing, jewellery, household items, and tools...
s in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
and Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
, the maps were the result of a collaborative process leaving the design to the geopolitical realities of the time, and the choice of colours to the artisans responsible for the embroidery. The embroidery of each map normally took one to two years and, in some cases, much longer due to external events. The invasion of Afghanistan by Russian troops in 1979 shifted production from Kabul to Peshawar
Peshawar
Peshawar is the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and the administrative center and central economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan....
in Pakistan, where the group of Afghan women had taken refuge. It also halted production completely until 1982, with only a few maps being made between 1982-1985.
"For me the work of the embroidered Mappa is the maximum of beauty. For that work I did nothing, chose nothing, in the sense that: the world is made as it is, not as I designed it, the flags are those that exist, and I did not design them; in short I did absolutely nothing; when the basic idea, the concept, emerges everything else requires no choosing." Alighiero e Boetti, 1974
A chief example of this series, Mappa del Mondo, 1989 ("Map of the World, 1989"), is on view in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (see Key Works).
Exhibitions
Having shown in Milan and Turin, Boetti was invited by Harald SzeemannHarald Szeemann
Harald Szeemann was a Swiss curator and art historian.-Life:Szeemann was born in Bern. He studied art history, archaeology and journalism in Bern and Paris, and in 1956 he began working as an actor, stage designer and painter, as well as doing one-man shows. He started creating exhibitions in 1957...
to participate in the seminal exhibition "Live in your Head. When Attitudes become Forms" in 1969. Boetti had his first US solo exhibition in New York at John Weber Gallery in 1973. In 1978, he held an anthological exhibition curated by Jean Christophe Ammann at the Kunsthalle Basel
Kunsthalle Basel
Since opening in 1872, Kunsthalle Basel has examined various positions concerning contemporary art. This renowned exhibition space in the Swiss city of Basel has a very long tradition of supporting avant-garde artists and expanding the accepted boundaries of contemporary art. Contemporary art...
that featured historical works alongside more recent ones. He continued to show throughout Italy and the United States until his premature death. He was the subject of a retrospective in 1992 that traveled to Bonn and Münster, Germany, and Lucerne, Switzerland. He has been honored post-humously with several large-scale exhibitions, most notably at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, or the National Gallery of Modern Art , is an art gallery in Rome, Italy, dedicated to modern art....
, Rome (1996); the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Vienna in 1997; the Museum für Moderne Kunst
Museum für Moderne Kunst
The Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt am Main was founded in 1981. The museum was designed by the Viennese architect Hans Hollein. Because of its triangular shape, it is called "piece of cake"....
in Frankfurt am Main in 1998; Whitechapel Gallery
Whitechapel Gallery
The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, it was founded in 1901 as one of the first publicly-funded galleries for temporary exhibitions in London, and it has a long...
, London (1999); and Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein
The Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein is the state museum of modern and contemporary art in Vaduz. The building by the Swiss architects Meinrad Morger, Heinrich Degelo and Christian Kerez was completed in November 2000...
, Vaduz. The artist took part in Documenta
Documenta
documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...
s 5 (1972) and 7 (1982) and the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
(1978, 1980, 1986, 1990, 1995). In 2001, the Venice Pavillon was completely dedicated to Alighiero e Boetti’s work.
Select exhibitions
- Galleria Christian Stein, Turin, Italy, 1967
- Arte Povera, Galleria La Bertesca, Genoa, 1967 (group exhibition)
- Shaman Showman, Galleria De Nieubourg, Milan, Italy, 1969
- When Attitude Becomes Form, curated by Harald Szeemann, Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland, 1969 (group exhibition)
- Io che prendo il sole a Torino il 24-2-1969, Galleria Sperone, Turin, Italy, 1969.
- John Weber Gallery, New York, 1973
- Mettere al mondo il mondo, Sperone-Fischer Gallery, Rome, Italy, 1973
- Kunstmuseum Lucerne, Switzerland, 1975.
- Kunsthalle Basel, curated by Jean-Christophe Amman, Basel, Switzerland, 1978
- Art Agency Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, 1980.
- 44th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, 1990.
- Synchronizitaet als ein Prinzip akausaler Zusammenhaenge, Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany; Westfalischer Kunstverein, Munster, Germany; Kunstmuseum, Lucerne, Switzerland, 1992–1993
- Alternando da 1 a 100 e viceversa, Centre National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble, Grenoble, France, 1993
- The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California, 1994
- P.S.1 Museum, Long Island City, New York, 1994.
- Alighiero e Boetti, part of the project, Origin and Destination, Societe des Expositions du Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium, 1994
- Alighiero Boetti, Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin, Italy; Musee d'Art Moderne, Villeneuve d'Ascq, France; Museum Moderner Kunst, Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, Austria, 1996–97
- Alighiero Boetti: Mettere al mondo il mondo ("Bringing the World into the World") - Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and Galerie Jahrhunderthalle Hoechst, Germany, 1998
- Boetti; the maverick spirit of Arte Povera Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1999
- Zero to Infinity, Arte Povera 1962-1972 - Tate Modern, London,http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/artepovera/boetti.htm' Walker Center for the Arts, Minneapolis, MI, 2001-2002 http://www.walkerart.org/archive/5/AD73F90F341B63316165.htm
- When 1 is 2: The Art of Alighiero e Boetti - Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX, 2002
- Quasi Tutto, Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo, Italy, 2004.
- In 2008, Simon Lee Gallery in London exhibited a group of Alighiero Boetti works.
Key Works (Selection)
- Mappa del Mondo, 1989 ("Map of the World, 1989"), Afghan embroidery on fabric, Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=80620 (image)
- Tutto ("Everything"), 1993, Afghan embroidery on fabric, collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt am Main, Germany http://www.mmk-frankfurt.de (no image available).
Art Market
In 2010, Boetti's Mappa (1989) was sold at Christie'sChristie's
Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...
London for £1,833,250 ($2,757,208).
Alighiero Boetti is represented by Sprüth Magers Berlin London
Sprüth Magers Berlin London
Sprüth Magers is a commerical art gallery owned by Monika Spüth and Philomene Magers, with spaces in London and Berlin, representing such artists including Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Andreas Gursky, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman and Rosemarie Trockel...
.
External links
- Website of the Alighiero Boetti Foundation (Fondazione Alighiero Boetti), in Italian: http://www.fondazioneboetti.it/
- Simon Lee Gallery, London
- Website of the Alighiero Boetti Archives (Archivio Alighiero Boetti), in English and Italian: http://www.archivioalighieroboetti.it/index_eng.asp
- Unofficial website devoted to Alighiero e Boetti and his work, in Italian: http://www.boettiealighiero.virtuale.org/
- More examples of Alighiero e Boetti's work, including lavori biro and embroideries, from the website of the Sperone Westwater Gallery in New York: http://www.speronewestwater.com/cgi-bin/iowa/artists/related.html?record=17&info=works