Alighiero Boetti (Turin 1940-Rome 1994)

He was born in Turin and made his debut in the Arte Povera movement in January 1967. He was an extremely prolific conceptual artist who used various techniques to realise his works, some of them very manual, such as embroidery and collage. The conception behind Boetti's works did not follow a particular strand, but was inspired by various ideologies, ranging from the reuse of unconventional materials, geopolitics, the concept of duplication to self-reflection, and from Arabian culture to geometry. In 1972 he moved to Rome, but already in the previous year the artist discovered Afghanistan, a country he visited periodically, and started an artistic collaboration with Afghan embroiderers. Among his main works on recurring themes are the Maps, colourful planispheres representing political changes in the world. Besides the embroidered maps, Boetti also made Tapestries often using the warp and weft technique, and Biros, works made with blue and black ballpoint pens that often include texts and symbols. The artist has exhibited in the most emblematic exhibitions of his generation, from When attitudes become form (1969) to Contemporanea (1973), from Identité italienne (1981) to The italian metamorphosis 1943-1968 (1994). He has exhibited several times at the Venice Biennale, with a solo room in the 1990 edition, a posthumous homage in 2001 and a large exhibition at the Fondazione Cini in the recent 2017 edition. Among the most significant exhibitions in recent years was the large retrospective Game Plan in three prestigious venues (the MOMA in New York, the Tate in London and the Reina Sofia in Madrid). Of the large body of works, many are held in various Italian and international museums, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Stedelijk Museum, MOCA in Los Angeles, etc.