Alighiero Boetti

born Turin (ITALY) 1940 died Rome (ITALY) 1994

Alighiero Boetti was born in Turin, Italy in 1940. Although not formally trained in art, Boetti was preoccupied with the theory of creativity from an early age. Traveling to Afghanistan at the beginning of the 1970s, he was introduced to the traditional craft of embroidery, which marked a turning point in the artist's career. His fundamental concern with the relationship between "order" and "disorder" is manifest in his grid structures, derived from the "magical squares", that feature sayings and aphorisms that stem from cultural, philosophical, mathematical and linguistic contexts.

Having shown in Milan and Turin, Boetti had his first US solo exhibition in New York at John Weber Gallery in 1973. He continued to show throughout Italy and the United States until his premature death in 1994.

He has been honored post-humously with several large-scale exhibitions, most notably at the Museum Moderne Kunst in Vienna in 1997 and the Museum Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt am Main in 1998. The 2001 exhibition with Gagosian Gallery was organized in conjunction with the Archivo Boetti in Rome, their first collaboration with a commercial gallery, and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

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Select Exhibitions

• Alighiero Boetti 1965 - 1994 - Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin, Italy, 1996
• Alighiero Boetti: Mettere al mondo il mondo ("Bringing the World into the World") - Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 1998
• Zero to Infinity, Arte Povera 1962-1972 - Tate Modern, London, 2001
• When 1 is 2: The Art of Alighiero e Boetti - Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX, 2002

Select Works

• Citta di Torino - 1967
• Manifesto 1967 - 1970
• 16 dicembre 2040 11 luglio 2023 - 1971
• Calligrafia - 1971
• "Untitled" - Victoria Boogie Woogie - 1972
• I sei sensi - 1973
• Aerei - 1978
• Simmetria Asimmetria - 1979
• Salezucchero - 1980
• Immaginando Tutto - 1982
• Alighiero e Boetti - 1982
• Dimenticare il Tempo Perduto - 1982
• Verbi Riflessivi - 1983
• Cinque Per Cinque Venticinque - 1983
• Utile Dilettevole - 1983
• Mappa del mondo - 1988
• Famedivento - 1988
• Fregio - 1990
• Mi Fuma Il Cervello - 1993

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