1989
Embroidery on canvas
17 x 19 cm
Signed on the reverse
Work accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by Archivio Alighiero Boetti, Rome
In 1967, Sol LeWitt wrote in his Paragraphs on Conceptual Art: [...] The idea becomes a machine that makes the art [...], a revolutionary principle for new developments in art history, which, for the first time, theorized the centrality of the idea as the most important principle of the creative mechanism. Everything else became secondary, including the act of physically creating the work, which began to be delegated to third parties.
Twenty years later, Alighiero Boetti decided to revisit this same principle, updating it within a post-conceptual practice that saw in the logic of separating the self, in play, irony, and reflections on the communicative dynamics of language, some of the founding elements of a body of work that would have an extraordinary impact on future generations.
Alighiero on one side and Boetti on the other. Autonomous entities, separate and equally involved in the creative process, which act as a mirror, and at an even more general level, the more macroscopic separation between the creator-the artist-and the executor, identified, in the case of the famous series of Ricami (Embroideries), through the involvement of Afghan women who were delegated the material realization of that new and cryptic alphabet that remains indecipherable unless one knows the rules for reading it. Speaking of religion, Boetti himself addressed Salman (his Afghan assistant and friend) in these very terms: In Islam, you can pay someone to go to Mecca in your place... it's the same for my works.
More broadly, Boetti's analysis of language is contextualized within a socio-political and critical scenario that recognized the importance of art (and consequently of the work) as an art-vehicle of communication, or as a true form of communication capable of exerting an impact far beyond the boundaries of the individual sphere.
Separation and language. These are the two fundamental points that make this type of work (and this one in particular, due to the rarity of the phrase that makes it even more precious - Coperte e scoperte [Covered and uncovered]) small masterpieces for the evolution of 20th-century art worldwide.
PROVENANCE:
Studio d'Arte Campaiola, Rome (stamp on the reverse)
Casamonti Collection, Florence (stamp on the reverse)
Private collection, Verona