Alighiero Boetti

(Italian, 1940-1994)

Untitled (Amore)
1980

Footnotes

This work is registered in the Archivio Alighiero Boetti, Rome, under no. 8155, and is accompanied by a photo-certificate of authenticity.

Provenance
Galleria Emilio Mazzoli, Modena
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner circa 1985


Belonging to an important private Italian collection, the following four works by Alighiero Boetti offer a privileged insight into the artist's practice and particularly his versatility across a wide range of techniques and media.

Untitled (Amore) from 1980, is an extremely rare example of his biro (ballpoint pen) works. Rare for the choice of the word Amore (Love), which is placed in the middle of the composition, but also for the collage element and the presence of three different colours of ballpoint pen which are normally only used in the artist's very large multi-panel works; this work is a real gem. The intimacy of the word 'Love' is echoed in the exquisite and intimate size of this work and also in the choice of the main colour of this composition, red, which has for over hundreds of years of art history been the colour of love and passion. This is further enhanced by the very personal inscription which refers to Emilio Mazzoli, the first owner of this work, and to his wife Melita.

Boetti frequently used text in his artistic production as we have seen in his biro works and as we can also see in his famous arazzi (embroideries) series, maybe the most recognisable series from the artist, and from which we are offering two classic examples in different sizes: Dall'oggi al domain (From today to tomorrow) from circa 1989 and Svelare e rivelare (Expose and reveal) from circa 1992.

Executed by female Afghan embroiderers following templates created by Boetti, these mosaic-like square grids display letters which need to be read from top to bottom and from the left column to the right. These arazzi are based on Boetti's principle of ordine e disordine (order and disorder) as each letter is placed in a small square and in a particular order within the overall work, but the text is not readable at first glance. The letters appear to be in disorder which gives a sense of abstraction and mystery to the composition.

In this particular case, the two present works were executed in Pakistan where the Afghan craftswomen working with Boetti had escaped following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. These works carry an inevitable political meaning, and in particular the desire of the artist to erase cultural divisions with the union of East and West through a collaborative creative process. In these embroideries, Boetti also wanted to play with the notion of craftsmanship and the notion of art and its correlation. The text usually consists of short sentences which sometimes relate to synonyms as in Svelare e rivelare or with the concept of time as in Dall'oggi al domain.

Faccine (small faces) from 1977 is a large and playful work that requires, as the embroideries and other series by Boetti, the intervention of other people in its execution. The print component in this work is based on an ink drawing executed by the artist in 1976 which depicted small faces drawn in the manner of a child with only few geometrical features, which had been magnified in a 1:3 scale and then distributed to schoolchildren from a Milan school to be coloured. Once the prints were filled with colours by the schoolchildren these works were then signed by the artist and mounted on canvas to become the finished artwork. Two of these drawings were also coloured by the artist together with his daughter Agata who was five years old at the time. Boetti also did another version of this subject called Faccine colorate (coloured small faces) three years later in 1979 but the dimensions of these works are smaller and some of the colours are serigraphic and not handmade as in the present work.

Alighiero Boetti is considered to be one of the most influential and interesting conceptual artists of his generation, using a vast range of different materials and techniques and dealing with global cultural and existential issues. His exhibition Game Plan from 2012, which travelled from the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, passing by the Tate Modern in London to finish in the MoMa in New York, was an enormous success with both critical and public audiences alike. Alighiero Boetti's works are in several of the main public collections around the world including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, MOCA in Los Angeles as well in MoMa in New York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome.