Art News

Major retrospective of the work of Alighiero Boetti opens at Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid

MADRID.- Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994), who identified with arte povera early in his career but soon distanced himself from this movement, was a prolific, unclassifiable artist who, trying to avoid any form of artistic self absorption, explored different modes and degrees of collaboration throughout his career. His oeuvre can be placed within the context of relational aesthetics and in his art notions such as multiplicity, duality and division play a key role (thus his decision in 1972 to starting signing his work Alighiero e Boetti) and a balance is sought between the intellectual and the sensible, order and disorder, individuality and collectivity. Fusing conceptual rigour, a vocation towards the experimental and a playful spirit, Boetti always allows chance and coincidence to influence his work. His work, strongly poetic and iconic, uses a wide range of techniques and tools – from drawing and painting to mail art or the production