Alighiero Boetti Italy, 1940-1994

Alighiero Boetti was born in Turin in 1940. From 1968, he added an ‘e’ (Italian for ‘and’) between his first name and surname creating a double character which he used throughout his career.

 

Boetti’s affiliation with the Arte Povera movement was brief, and by the 1970s, he stood apart from the collective movements of those times. He was heavily influenced by his travels to Afghanistan - he visited the country for the first time in 1971 and then regularly until 1979 when the Russian Army invaded. In his famous Mappa series, Boetti directed Afghan craftswomen to embroider maps with geopolitical entities represented by their flags.

Notable solo exhibitions have taken place at the Magasin (Centre National d’Art Contemporain de Grenoble); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the MoMA PS1, New York. A major retrospective recently took place at the Museo Nacional de Arte Centro Reina Sofia, Madrid; Tate Modern, London; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Boetti lived and worked in Rome, where he died in 1994.