Alighiero Boetti

Private Collection
Sale: Finarte, Milan, Opere d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, 6 April 1993, Lot 20
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Monreale, Monastero dei Benedettini, Ottanta Novanta, Biennale d'Arte Filosofia Spettacolo, 1991, p. 50, illustrated

Jean-Christophe Amman, Alighiero Boetti Catalogo Generale, Vol. II, Milan 2012, p. 378, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Upon very close inspection, there are a few small pulled threads in places, in keeping with the artist's working process.
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Inspired by various literary movements in Italy but most of all by his own fascination with principles of mathematical and linguistic organisation, Alighiero Boetti was struck by the poetics of sixteen-letter word combinations that neatly fitted into a four-by-four square. This discovery, which the artist made in 1971, was first executed with embroidery two years later in Ordine e Disordine, leading to the subsequent explorations of order and disorder in his arazzi (tapestries). Embroidered in Afghanistan, the present arazzo is an excellent example of Boetti’s collaborative approach to art-making, in which the execution of the work is beyond the control of the artist, thus introducing certain elements of chance, whilst also making use of the possibilities of globalisation. Its strong visual appeal is therefore matched by a multi-layered conceptual and linguistic dimension, making this work highly representative of Alighiero Boetti’s influential practice.

In the present work, a rare sequence of fifteen canvasses is ordered according to a clear syntactical formula - pre-determined by the length of the words, their size and geometric arrangement. They are also, however, inherently disordered in their seemingly unsystematic colour combinations and lack of spacing. Moreover, whilst fourteen of the canvasses share the same four-by-four grid, the final work differs from this compositional structure - a hint of disorder characteristic of Boetti’s multi-partite works. This last canvas is also a typical example of the artist’s use of language, as Segno e Disegno sets up a duality that shows similarity in the appearance of the words, whilst differing in meaning (‘sign’ and ‘drawing’) - a clever and poetic play with words that is repeated throughout the work.

Whereas many artists of this period favoured ideas over execution, the visual appearance of Boetti’s work is as original and striking as its theoretical foundations. Further to his ideas concerning order and disorder, the colour combinations of the individual letters differ across the work, but certain recurring compositions, such as the black on white O, create a visual staccato that gives shape to a certain organisational principle. As Mark Godfrey observed, this approach resulted in a strong formal quality: “Boetti sometimes opens up a new experience in which we read words differently and appreciate the shapes and colours of letters, rather than just approaching language for its information and instrumental purposes” (Mark Godfrey, Alighiero e Boetti, London 2009, pp. 128-9).