Alighiero Boetti

Mille novecento settantotto, 1978

Torí, 1940 - Roma, 1994

With his early ties to Arte Povera, Alighiero Boetti was an artist in constant evolution. From the 1960s to the 1990s he took on concepts such as limits, chaos, languages and cultures, developing work with a powerfully poetic and iconic charge where chance and randomness came into play. The viewer becomes an accomplice in the game Boetti proposes, with his works conceived out of collective and cooperative action. The artist’s interest for Eastern thought and culture led him to collaborate with Afghani craftspeople, who he commissioned various tapestries to, like the one bearing the title Mille novecento settantotto [Nineteen Seventy-Eight] where we see all the various ways this date can be depicted in letters. This procedure relates to one of Boetti’s obsessions, as he worked to develop entertaining and creative ways to subvert the organisational systems that structure the world.

Related publications