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ALIGHIERO BOETTI | Incontri e scontri (Meetings and Collisions)
Estimate
200,000 - 300,000 GBP
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Description
- Alighiero Boetti
- Incontri e scontri (Meetings and Collisions)
- signed and variously inscribed on the reverse of the left sheet; numbered 24860 / 1-3 and variously inscribed on the reverse of the centre sheet; variously inscribed on the reverse of the right sheet
- ballpoint pen on paper, in three parts
- each: 102.9 by 72.4 cm. 40 1/2 by 28 1/2 in.
- overall: 102.9 by 222.9 cm. 40 1/2 by 87 3/4 in.
- Executed in 1982.
Provenance
Galleria La Bertesca, Genoa Giorgio Re, Lausanne
Private Collection
Sotheby’s, Milan, 27 November 2001, Lot 275 (consigned by the above)
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Private Collection
Sotheby’s, Milan, 27 November 2001, Lot 275 (consigned by the above)
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum, When 1 is 2: The Art of Alighiero e Boetti, June - October 2002, pp. 68-69, illustrated in colour (detail)
Condition
Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate although the overall tonality is slightly cooler in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. The sheets are attached verso to the backing board in several places and there is very minor undulation to each sheet. The colour intensity of the ball point pen appears very good across all three sheets. Left sheet: Very close inspection reveals very minor wear to all corner tips and a spot of media accretion to the centre right of the top edge. Centre sheet: The green of the central sheet appears slightly paler than the other two sheets as is visible in the catalogue illustration, this appears to be original. Very close inspection reveals a small media accretion to the right edge towards the lower right corner. Right sheet: Very close inspection reveals two short creases to the left extreme edge towards the to top left corner.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."
Catalogue Note
Arte Povera Introduction In 1967 the eminent curator and art historian, Germano Celant, gave expression to a new artistic impetus emerging in Italy: Arte Povera. So called owing to a collective drive towards incorporating everyday materials into the realm of high art, this movement was given expression by a roll-call of artists at the vanguard of the Italian avant-garde. The following sequence of works encapsulates the spirit of Celant’s artistic set as it presents significant pieces by Alighiero Boetti, Luciano Fabro, Francesco Lo Savio and Michelangelo Pistoletto.
As a collective, these artists were allied in their simultaneous rejection of consumer-society in response to the economic impact of the ‘Italian miracle’ – a socio-economic boom caused by the post-war industrialisation of Northern Italy. Nonetheless, while Celant’s positing of Arte Povera was nationally centred, the importance and scope of this moment in Italian culture deeply reverberated across the international course of art history that followed in its wake.
Comprising a diverse assembly of painted and sculptural works, executed between the years of 1959 and 1988, the following sequence brings together a unique compendium of the ground-breaking themes and concepts that developed out of this artistic climate. From Lo Savio’s early and elemental manipulation of iron in Untitled (1959), to the sumptuous fabrication of Fabro’s Edera (1969), Pistoletto’s iconic use of reflective stainless-steel in his Mirror Paintings (1962-66 and 1967), through to Boetti’s hand-crafted tapestries (1988) and biro drawings (1982), the diverse sensibilities presented here are nonetheless united by a shared concern with the poetic and conceptual capacity inherent within simple – or poveri – materials and processes, and natural forms. Informed by an aesthetic diversity of materia and a scrutiny of the theoretical implications of the surface plane, the present sequence of works emblematise the Arte Povera movement of the late-1960s.
As a true reflection of the artistic innovation that emerged across the course of the last century, the work of these artists exemplifies the global impact of the pioneering creative-consciousness that emerged out of Italy during the past-war decades.
Incontri e scontri is an immaculate instance of Alighiero Boetti’s Lavora a Biro, which he began in 1972. Comprising monochrome fields of colour, these works are rendered with innumerable strokes of ball-point pen on paper that coalesce to form an apparently aleatory sprinkling of commas. However, stacked along the left vertical border, letters of the Latin alphabet correspond to this schema, and when deciphered by the viewer, the vertical and horizontal axes impart a hidden message. In this instance, the three green-biro panels spell out the work’s title: Incontri e scontri or Meetings and Collisions. To create the Lavora a Biro Boetti enlisted a coordinator in Mariangelica de Gaetano, who in turn supervised up to thirty assistants over a number of months for the production of these works. Embracing the serendipitous nuances in cross-hatching, hue, shading and evenness of colour imparted by his method, Boetti embedded typically paradoxical and linguistically playful dictums into these works, such as ‘Mettere al mondo in mondo’ (‘putting the world into the world’) and ‘dare tempo al tempo’ (‘give time to time’). Expressing the magnetic paradoxes of Arte Povera – the reintroduction of the ordinary to itself; the regeneration of what already exists – Incontri e scontri is as much an untempered evocation of the Mediterranean elements as a work of cerebral and politically-charged conceptual art.
There is a latent metaphysics in Incontri e scontri that works upon the viewer’s imagination. By signalling the presence of letters via an absence of marks (i.e. the blank commas), linguistic expressions are represented less by actions positively produced, than by the unconscious omission of all other possible behaviours. By virtue of letters and then words coalescing into existence out of this fecund, mesmeric green, speech acts are conceived as the products of natural and organic processes, not supernatural Cartesian souls; and yet an element of choice on the part of the viewer is ineliminable. Like the star gazer who traces constellations onto the night sky, the viewer partakes in the games, built into humanly-perceptible objects, of category and order.
This work is registered in the Archivio Alighiero Boetti, Rome and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.
As a collective, these artists were allied in their simultaneous rejection of consumer-society in response to the economic impact of the ‘Italian miracle’ – a socio-economic boom caused by the post-war industrialisation of Northern Italy. Nonetheless, while Celant’s positing of Arte Povera was nationally centred, the importance and scope of this moment in Italian culture deeply reverberated across the international course of art history that followed in its wake.
Comprising a diverse assembly of painted and sculptural works, executed between the years of 1959 and 1988, the following sequence brings together a unique compendium of the ground-breaking themes and concepts that developed out of this artistic climate. From Lo Savio’s early and elemental manipulation of iron in Untitled (1959), to the sumptuous fabrication of Fabro’s Edera (1969), Pistoletto’s iconic use of reflective stainless-steel in his Mirror Paintings (1962-66 and 1967), through to Boetti’s hand-crafted tapestries (1988) and biro drawings (1982), the diverse sensibilities presented here are nonetheless united by a shared concern with the poetic and conceptual capacity inherent within simple – or poveri – materials and processes, and natural forms. Informed by an aesthetic diversity of materia and a scrutiny of the theoretical implications of the surface plane, the present sequence of works emblematise the Arte Povera movement of the late-1960s.
As a true reflection of the artistic innovation that emerged across the course of the last century, the work of these artists exemplifies the global impact of the pioneering creative-consciousness that emerged out of Italy during the past-war decades.
Incontri e scontri is an immaculate instance of Alighiero Boetti’s Lavora a Biro, which he began in 1972. Comprising monochrome fields of colour, these works are rendered with innumerable strokes of ball-point pen on paper that coalesce to form an apparently aleatory sprinkling of commas. However, stacked along the left vertical border, letters of the Latin alphabet correspond to this schema, and when deciphered by the viewer, the vertical and horizontal axes impart a hidden message. In this instance, the three green-biro panels spell out the work’s title: Incontri e scontri or Meetings and Collisions. To create the Lavora a Biro Boetti enlisted a coordinator in Mariangelica de Gaetano, who in turn supervised up to thirty assistants over a number of months for the production of these works. Embracing the serendipitous nuances in cross-hatching, hue, shading and evenness of colour imparted by his method, Boetti embedded typically paradoxical and linguistically playful dictums into these works, such as ‘Mettere al mondo in mondo’ (‘putting the world into the world’) and ‘dare tempo al tempo’ (‘give time to time’). Expressing the magnetic paradoxes of Arte Povera – the reintroduction of the ordinary to itself; the regeneration of what already exists – Incontri e scontri is as much an untempered evocation of the Mediterranean elements as a work of cerebral and politically-charged conceptual art.
There is a latent metaphysics in Incontri e scontri that works upon the viewer’s imagination. By signalling the presence of letters via an absence of marks (i.e. the blank commas), linguistic expressions are represented less by actions positively produced, than by the unconscious omission of all other possible behaviours. By virtue of letters and then words coalescing into existence out of this fecund, mesmeric green, speech acts are conceived as the products of natural and organic processes, not supernatural Cartesian souls; and yet an element of choice on the part of the viewer is ineliminable. Like the star gazer who traces constellations onto the night sky, the viewer partakes in the games, built into humanly-perceptible objects, of category and order.
This work is registered in the Archivio Alighiero Boetti, Rome and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.