CATALOGUES
First tome
ALIGHIERO BOETTI
GENERAL CATALOGUE
FIRST TOME
EDITED BY: Archivio Alighiero Boetti
SCIENTIFIC DIRECTION: Jean Christophe Ammann
PUBLISHER: Electa
PAGES: 376
ILLUSTRATIONS: 450
RELEASE DATE: december 2009
The catalog is on sale at the Archive. For information: info@archivioalighieroboetti.it
In the series of general catalogs and reasoned of the great artists, Electa publishes the first of four volumes of the complete works of Alighiero Boetti, dedicated to works created between 1961 and 1971.
The catalog, curated by the under the direction of Jean-Christophe Ammann and the support of the scientific committee of Achille Bonito Oliva, Laura Cherubini, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and Giorgio Verzotti, is just the beginning of a work to systematize the full and wide production of Boetti.
This first volume is an invaluable reference tool, a code to decipher the mechanisms of conceptual artistic career of Boetti. In addition to the introductory essay by J. C. Ammann, who proposes an innovative interpretation of the work boettiana, there is a detailed chronology general by Annemarie Sauzeau (“Works and Days”) full of images, some of which, the artist’s life and available through the references present in the tabs of the individual works, belonging not only to the first volume, but also to the next. Finally the devices contain the updated bibliography and history of all the exhibits.
The first volume will do so as a pivot for the consultation of the other three. The second volume, scheduled for 2012, will be dedicated to the works of the years 1972 to 1979, the third and the fourth volume will be for the years 1980-1985 and 1986-1994.
This publication states, finally, the collaboration between the Archive Alighiero Boetti Alighiero e Boetti and the Foundation, the first dedicated precisely to the cataloging, the second and the promotion of the works of the artist.
Second tome
ALIGHIERO BOETTI
GENERAL CATALOGUE
SECOND TOME
EDITED BY: Archivio Alighiero Boetti
SCIENTIFIC DIRECTION: Jean Christophe Ammann
PUBLISHER: Electa
PAGES: 432
ILLUSTRATIONS: 1200
RELEASE DATE: october 2012
The catalog is on sale at the Archive. For information: info@archivioalighieroboetti.it
“… I think that I place in a research situation, in the sense of an attitude of attention and curiosity that allows you to see a lot of things and a lot of fun with the world, behind whose appearances are of incredible magic: magic of words , magic numbers … ”
Alighiero Boetti
Electa published the second volume of the catalog of Alighiero Boetti that is the crucial period of his poetic conceptual maps, postal works, works in pen. These and other works created between 1972 and 1979 are the most important the artist produced and emphasize the fundamentals of his work: diversity, difference and repetition; fragmentation, mutation and profusion.
1972 was also the year at which he decides to enter an “and” between the first and last name thus highlighting the duality of his identity, the splitting twin, the otherness that is the origin of the principle of delegation, ie the split between ideation, of which the artist is the creator, and execution of the work that can in fact be made by a community of labor, a skilled labor, as in the case of the Afghan embroiderers.
A happy coincidence meant that three museums of absolute importance (the Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Tate Modern in London and the MoMA in New York) have agreed to dedicate the 2011-2012 work of Alighiero Boetti a retrospective very important, whose final stage coincides with the output of this Volume.
Third tome / part 1
ALIGHIERO BOETTI
GENERAL CATALOGUE
THIRD TOME / PART 1
EDITED BY: Archivio Alighiero Boetti
SCIENTIFIC DIRECTION: Jean Christophe Ammann
PUBLISHED: Electa
PAGES: 208
ILLUSTRATION: 301
RELEASE DATE: june 2015
The catalog is on sale at the Archive. For information: info@archivioalighieroboetti.it
The third tome of the General Catalog catalogs the works created between 1980 and 1987. A decade full of changes, from the great production of the delegated works, such as the Maps, the Tutto, the big Embroidery, the Airplanes or the Biro to works on paper with the great cycles and the numerous sheets with the narrative paths traced with the artist’s own hand.
This tome begins in the background of a violent and deeply sad change for Boetti. In 1980, due to the war in Afghanistan, Boetti can no longer return there, and follows the work remotely, with difficulty. The works like the Maps, the Tutto and the big Embroidery of the 80s were therefore started in the late ’70s.
At least until the mid-80s, Boetti did not undertake other embroideries because of the remoteness and operational structures threatened there in Afghanistan, and will begin to start new ones only towards the end of the decade in Pakistan but still continuing to work with his hands Afghans in refugee camps.
A transition to a new mode of production, but which will mainly concern the works of the 4th tome.
Instead, in the first half of the 1980s, Boetti noticeably accelerates the production of Biro and Airplanes that will be almost completely exhausted in the early 90s.
The decision to divide this tome into two parts was dictated by Boetti’s own work. The sharp increase in production of these years and the complexity of implementation pertinent to the catalog itself means that it was decided to treat the works of the 80s in two parts and changing the methodology.
In fact, if in the first two tomes, the works are cataloged chronologically, in this tome (both the first and the second part) the cataloging is and will be done by type and within each nucleus, the works are reorganized chronologically.
The first part of the third tome catalogs the Maps, the Tutto, the big Embroidery, the Biro and the Biro Airplanes made between 1980 and 1987.
All types already started in the 70s and who know their affirmation in the 80s. Great works, in terms of size and notoriety. All “delegate” works therefore made through the hands of others.
Third tome / 2
ALIGHIERO BOETTI
GENERAL CATALOGUE
THIRD TOME / 2
EDITED BY: ARCHIVIO ALIGHIERO BOETTI
The cataloguing work, undertaken by the Alighiero Boetti Archive with the Electa publishing house, continues with the second part of the third tome covering the years 1980 – 1987. It includes the numerous works on paper both delegated and made by Boetti, the production of the small embroideries, the Planes made with mixed techniques, the editions and the re-mades, that is, the “takes” of conceptual and Arte Povera works.
The progressive work of studying and cataloging Boetti’s work allows for increased knowledge, integration of updates, expanded analysis of the art-historical context, and, upon completion of the publication-which will include a final and fourth tome-the entirety and complexity of the artist’s production.
This second part of the third tome does not follow a chronological presentation of the works (as was the case in the first and second tomes), nor typological (as in the first volume of the third tome). The works are divided into thematic chapters through a selection of Alighiero Boetti’s solo exhibitions. The exhibits that open the individual chapters, where possible, are accompanied by documents related to the setting up of the exhibition in order to give back the idea of the exhibition space as the artist conceived it.
Reasoning essentially on the major thematic cycles, their technical and morphological analysis is privileged and thus their belonging to the relevant ‘family’ such as, by way of example, Nature a dull affair, Between Self and Self, Covers, Planes. Cycles that offer a reflection on Boetti’s poetics, creating a true diary of the artist.
A text by Mark Godfrey, the publication’s scientific director, introduces the volume.