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BOETTI Alighiero
1940 Turin - 1994 Rome
The harmony of dualism was an essential principle in the thoughts, feelings
and actions of Alighiero Boetti, who attained international acclaim with his
colourful embroidered pictures ("Arazzi").
In a photomontage with the title "I Gemelli" (English: The Twins), he not
only combined two photos of himself into a double self-portrait; but in the
subtitle, the dualistic principle is expressed once again: Alighiero e
Boetti. In the words of the artist: "Alighiero is the child-like part,
outwardly directed, determining a familiar environment. Alighiero, that is
what I am named and called by those who know me. Boetti is more abstract, if
only because a surname is itself yet another category."
Alighiero Boetti is an autodidact. His artistic career begins in the second
half of the sixties. After his first exhibition in 1967, he becomes
associated with the Arte Povera movement. He is interested in oriental
culture and other related disciplines, such as philosophy and alchemy.
In 1971, he travels to Afghanistan for the first time. He stays there for
one month and, through 1979 - the year of the invasion of the Russian army -
returns every year for longer periods of time. It is also in 1971 that he
commissions his first embroidered pictures, which are crafted by Afghani
women. The production of these embroidered pictures continues until his
death.
"From the very outset of his career as an artist, Alighiero tried to find an
artistic form suitable for expressing the fundamental structures of the
world which he discerned in appropriate aesthetic terms", writes Rolf
Lauter. "When the works were in the realisation phase, Alighiero often
resorted to a dialogical communication system between the artist, on the one
hand, and collaborators, assistants and outside parties handling the work,
on the other."
The placing of texts and word into grid-like structures plays a special role
in this process. The "Arazzi piccoli", for example, are generally comprised
of four by four, but often also of five by five or more squares of letters,
which are embroidered in random colour combinations. Read from top to
bottom, they reveal sayings such as "Dare tempo al tempo" (To give time
time), "Ordine e Disordine" (Order and Disorder), etc.
The "Arazzi grandi", on the other hand, are comprised of 25 x 25 squares of
letters. "Twenty-five is the square of the holy number five and is therefore
also the centre of magical squares. It consists of the sum of the numbers 1
+ 3+ 5 + 7 + 9, and thus contains all the holy numbers which can be used in
magic." (Boetti)
Among the most widely known works by Alighiero Boetti are the embroidered
maps of the world, which derive from conceptual works of the years 1967 to
1971. In September 1971, he took the first preliminary drawing to
Afghanistan. Once the artist specified the colours of the threads to be
used, four women then worked simultaneously on the embroidery, which,
depending on the format, took between one and two years to complete.
Equally popular among collectors are Boetti's "Lavori Biro" (Ballpoint Pen
Works). The works in this group were executed with "common" ballpoint pens
on paper, in the colours blue, black, red and green. Some of these were
later mounted on canvas spanned on stretcher frames, while others were
mounted on cardboard and placed in Plexiglas frames.
At least with the earlier works, the artist asked the individuals working on
the pictures to produce hatches which conformed as much as possible to a
basic grid of small squares in order to make the technique used to create
the pictures more visible. Later, the structures varied according to the
individuals' own patterns.
"The extent of the delegated work varies from the minimum, as in the case of
the Biro (Ballpoint Pen), where there is nothing creative to do at all, to
the maximum, as in the case of the Tutto (Everything). I asked the
assistants to draw everything, all possible forms, abstract and figurative,
and to join these together until there was no space left on the paper. Then
I brought the drawings to Afghanistan, where I had them embroidered with
threads of ninety different colours, whereby I stipulated that the exact
same amount of each colour had to be used."
From 1987 onwards, Boetti works together with his Iranian assistant Mahshid
Mussari, who collected the most varied motif patterns for the realisation of
the last and largest "Tutto". After weeks of preparatory work, the oversized
canvas could finally be sent to Peshawar in December 1993. After ten months,
the completed work could finally be sent back to Rome, although Alighiero
was never able to see it himself. He died in 1994 as a result of a brain
tumour.
This extraordinary work, which measures circa 2.5 x 6.5 meters (circa 8 x 21
feet), is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt am
Main. This "Tutto" is a symbol for the complexity of the world, its cultural
diversity and its development; and, especially in light of the most recent
political events, it can be viewed once again from an entirely new
perspective.
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