Alighiero Fabrizio Boetti known as Alighiero e Boetti (16 December 1940 – 24 February 1994) was an Italian

conceptual artist Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional Aesthetics, aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes ca ...

, considered to be a member of the art movement Arte Povera.

Background

Boetti is most famous for a series of embroidered maps of the world, ''Mappa'', created between 1971 and his death in 1994. Boetti's work was typified by his notion of 'twinning', leading him to add 'e' (and) between his names, 'stimulating a dialectic exchange between these two selves'.

Life

Alighiero Boetti was born in

Turin Turin ( , Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital ...

, to Corrado Boetti, a lawyer, and Adelina Marchisio, a violinist. Boetti abandoned his studies at the business school of the

University of Turin The University of Turin (Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Torino'', UNITO) is a public research university in the city of Turin, in the Piedmont region of Italy. It is one of the oldest universities in Europe and continues to play an impo ...

to work as an artist. Already in his early years, he had profound and wide-ranging theoretical interests and studied works on such diverse topics as philosophy, alchemy and esoterics. Among the preferred authors of his youth were the German writer

Hermann Hesse Hermann Karl Hesse (; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include ''Demian'', ''Steppenwolf (novel), Steppenwolf'', ''Siddhartha (novel), Siddhartha'', and ''The Glass Bead Game'', ...

and the Swiss-German painter and

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...

teacher

Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented wi ...

. Boetti also had a continuing interest in mathematics and music. At seventeen, Boetti discovered the works of the German painter

Wols Wols was the pseudonym of Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze (27 May 19131 September 1951), a German painter and photographer predominantly active in France. Though broadly unrecognized in his lifetime, he is considered a pioneer of lyrical abstracti ...

and the cut canvases of Argentine-Italian artist

Lucio Fontana Lucio Fontana (; 19 February 1899 – 7 September 1968) was an Argentine-Italian painter, sculptor and theorist. He is mostly known as the founder of Spatialism. Early life Born in Rosario, to Italian immigrant parents, he was t ...

. Boetti's own works of his late teen years, however, are oil paintings somewhat reminiscent of the Russian painter

Nicolas de Staël Nicolas de Staël (; January 5, 1914 – March 16, 1955) was a French painter of Russian origin known for his use of a thick impasto and his highly abstract landscape painting. He also worked with collage, illustration and textiles. Early life ...

. At age twenty, Boetti moved to Paris to study engraving. In 1962, while in France he met art critic and writer Annemarie Sauzeau, whom he was to marry in 1964 and with whom he had two children, Matteo (1967) and Agata (1972). From 1974 to 1976, he travelled to Guatemala, Ethiopia, Sudan. Boetti was passionate about non-western cultures, particularly of central and southern Asia, and travelled to Afghanistan and Pakistan numerous times in the 1970s and 1980s, although Afghanistan became inaccessible to him following the Soviet invasion in 1979. In 1975, he went back to New York. Active as an artist from the early 1960s to his premature death in 1994, Boetti developed a significant body of diverse works that were often both poetic and pleasing to the eye while at the same time steeped in his diverse theoretical interests and influenced by his extensive travels. He died of a brain tumour in Rome in 1994 at the age of 53.Charles Darwent (4 March 2012)
Alighiero Boetti, Tate Modern, London
''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

''.

Career

''Arte Povera''

From 1963 to 1965, Boetti began to create works out of then unusual materials such as plaster, masonite, plexiglass, light fixtures and other industrial materials. His first solo show was in 1967, at the Turin gallery of Christian Stein. Later that year participated in an exhibition at Galleria La Bertesca in the Italian city of Genoa, with a group of other Italian artists that referred to their works as Arte Povera, or ''poor art'', a term subsequently widely propagated by Italian art critic

Germano Celant Germano Celant (11 September 1940 – 29 April 2020) was an Italian art historian, critic and curator who coined the term " Arte Povera" (poor art) in 1967 and wrote many articles and books on the subject. Work Germano Celant was born in Genoa ...

. Boetti continued to work with a wide array of materials, tools, and techniques, including ball pens (biro) and even the postal system. Some of Boetti's artistic strategies are considered typical for Arte Povera, namely the use of the most modest materials and techniques, to take art off its pedestal of attributed "dignity". Boetti also took a keen interest in the relationship between chance and order, in various systems of classification (grids, maps, etc.), and non-Western traditions and cultural practices, influenced by his Afghanistan and Pakistan travels. An example of his Arte Povera work is ''Lampada annuale (Yearly Lamp)'' (1966), a single, outsized light bulb in a mirror-lined wooden box, which randomly switches itself on for eleven seconds each year. This work focuses both on the transformative powers of energy, and on the possibilities and limitations of chance – the likelihood of a viewer being present at the moment of illumination is remote. In 1967, Boetti produced the piece ''Manifesto'', a poster listing the names of artists that make up Boetti's creative background. ''Dossier Postale'' (1969–70) consists of a series of letters which were sent to 26 well-known recipients, primarily artists (

Giulio Paolini Giulio Paolini (born 5 November 1940) is an Italian artist associated with both Arte Povera and Conceptual Art. Biography Paolini was born in Genoa. After a childhood spent in Bergamo, he moved with his family to Turin where he still lives toda ...

Bruce Nauman Bruce Nauman (born December 6, 1941) is an American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives near Galisteo, New Mexico. Life and work ...

), art critics (

Lucy Lippard Lucy Rowland Lippard (born April 14, 1937) is an American writer, art critic, activist, and curator. Lippard was among the first writers to argue for the " dematerialization" at work in conceptual art and was an early champion of feminist art. S ...

Arturo Schwarz Arturo Umberto Samuele Schwarz (2 February 1924 – 23 June 2021) was an Italian scholar, art historian, poet, writer, lecturer, art consultant and curator of international art exhibitions. He lived in Milan, where he amassed a large collection o ...

), dealers (Konrad Fischer,

Leo Castelli Leo Castelli (born Leo Krausz; September 4, 1907 – August 21, 1999) was an Italian-American art dealer who originated the contemporary art gallery system. His gallery showcased contemporary art for five decades. Among the movements which ...

), and collectors (

Giuseppe Panza Giuseppe Panza di Biumo (23 March 1923 – 24 April 2010) was a collector of modern art. He lived in Milan and Varese, Italy. Life and work Giuseppe Panza was born on March 23, 1923, in Milan. His father, Ernesto, was a wine distributor who ...

, Corrado Levi) active at the time. Boetti sent the envelopes to imaginary addresses, thus each letter was returned to the artist undelivered, demonstrating Boetti's preoccupation with improbability and chance.Alighiero e Boetti, 25 January – 6 April 2002
The Arts Club of Chicago.

1972–1994

Boetti disassociated himself from the Arte Povera movement in 1972 and moved to Rome, without, however, completely abandoning some of its democratic, anti-elitist, strategies. In 1973, he renamed himself as a dual persona ''Alighiero e Boetti'' (“Alighiero and Boetti”) reflecting the opposing factors presented in his work: the individual and society, error and perfection, order and disorder. Already in his double-portrait ''I Gemelli'' begun in 1968 and published as a postcard, Boetti had altered photographs so that he appeared to be holding the hand of his identical twin. He often collaborated with both artists and non-artists, giving them significant freedom in their contributions to his works. For instance, one of the better known types of his works consists of colored letters embroidered in grids ("''arazzi''", meaning wall hangings or tapestries) on canvases of varying sizes, the letters upon closer inspection reading as short phrases in Italian, for instance ''Ordine e Disordine'' ("Order and Disorder") or ''Fuso Ma Non Confuso'' ("Mixed but not mixed up"), or similar truisms and wordplays. To create these pictures, Boetti worked with artisan embroiderers in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to whom he gave his designs but increasingly handed over the process of selecting and combining the colors and thus deciding the final aesthetic look of the work. Similarly, in the ''lavori biro'' (ball pen paintings), he would invite friends and acquaintances, to fill large colored sections of the multi-part work by ball pen, typically alternating between a man and a woman from one sheet to another. Boetti made his first ballpoint ink drawings in 1972–73 and continued through the late 1980s.
Sperone Westwater Gallery, New York. The largest of all Boetti's Biro works are the four versions of ''Ononimo'' (1973), with their progressions of eleven separate panels, each hand-coloured in biro (two in blue biro and two in red).Alighiero Boetti, ''Ononimo'' (1973)
Christie's Post War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction, 11 February 2010, London. His most ambitious project is a large embroidered piece titled ''Classificazione dei mille fiumi piu lunghi del mondo (Classification of the thousand longest rivers in the world'' (1977). Following an invitation by

Hans Ulrich Obrist Hans Ulrich Obrist (born 1968) is a Swiss art curator, critic, and historian of art. He is artistic director at the Serpentine Galleries, London. Obrist is the author of ''The Interview Project'', an extensive ongoing project of interviews. He is ...

, the artist published six of his watercolour drawings in

Austrian Airlines Austrian Airlines AG, often shortened to Austrian, is the flag carrier of Austria and a subsidiary of the Lufthansa Group. The airline is headquartered on the grounds of Vienna International Airport in Schwechat where it also maintains its hub ...

' in flight magazine ‘Sky Lines’. To accompany this publication, jigsaws of the images were produced, and were available to passengers on the flights at this time. In 1986 he took part at the

Lucio Amelio Lucio Amelio (13 September 1931 – 2 July 1994) was an Italian art dealer, curator, and actor. For decades he contributed to make Naples an international art centre encouraging the dialogue between European and American contemporary arts. Bio ...

's exhibition "Terrae Motus". After the 1980 Irpinia earthquake the Neapolitan gallerist asked to the major contemporary artists of that time to realize a work of art about the earthquake; so Boetti realized for this occasion ''Di palo in frasca nell'estate dell'anno millenovecentottantasei, accanto al Pantheon'', a reflection on the concepts of time and thinking: the monkey stands for the human thought's capacity to jump from a think to another.

Embroideries

Perhaps best known is Boetti's series of large embroidered maps of the world, called simply ''Mappa''. After the

Six-Day War The Six-Day War (, ; ar, النكسة, , or ) or June War, also known as the 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states (primarily United Arab Republic, Egypt, S ...

in June 1967 the artist began to collect newspaper covers featuring maps of war zones. He then asked his wife to embroider the shapes from the June 1967 map.

Holland Cotter Holland Cotter is an art critic with ''The New York Times''. In 2009, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Life and work Cotter was born in Connecticut and grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. He earned his A.B. from Harvard College in 1970, wh ...

(28 June 2012),
The Whole World, Stitched and Patched – Alighiero Boetti Retrospective at Museum of Modern Art
. ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. nytimes.com. He pondered the idea of the first large-scale Mappa during his second voyage to Afghanistan in 1971,Alighiero e Boetti, November 7, 2009 – January 23, 2010
Gladstone Gallery, New York. resulting in a series of woven world maps entitled ''Territori Occupati''. Between 1971 and 1979 he set up the One Hotel with his friend and business partner Gholam Dastaghir in

Kabul Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into 22 municipal districts. Acco ...

as a kind of artistic commune and created large colourful embroideries, the most famous of these were the Mappa, world maps in which each country features the design of its national flag. In 1971, Boetti commissioned women at an embroidery school in Kabul to embroider his first map. He initially intended to make only one but went on to commission roughly 150 of them in his lifetime, with no two possessing exactly the same dimensions. Boetti's maps reflect a changing geopolitical world from 1971 to 1994, a period that included the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Embroidered by up to 500

artisan An artisan (from french: artisan, it, artigiano) is a skilled craft worker who makes or creates material objects partly or entirely by hand. These objects may be functional or strictly decorative, for example furniture, decorative art ...

s in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the maps were the result of a collaborative process leaving the design to the geopolitical realities of the time, and the choice of colours to the artisans responsible for the embroidery. The maps delineate the political boundaries of the countries. In one map, the sea is unexpectedly coloured pink rather than blue, as landlocked Afghans had no tradition of mapping, certainly not of oceans. The border texts contain dates or details relative to the work's production, Boetti's signature and sayings, as well as excerpts from Sufi poetry.

"For me the work of the embroidered Mappa is the maximum of beauty. For that work I did nothing, chose nothing, in the sense that: the world is made as it is, not as I designed it, the flags are those that exist, and I did not design them; in short I did absolutely nothing; when the basic idea, the concept, emerges everything else requires no choosing." Alighiero e Boetti, 1974

The brightly colored ''Arazzi'' works are embroidered pieces made in various sizes that depict sentences drawn from poetry, wisdoms from around the world, or sayings invented by Boetti himself. The ''Arazzi grandi'', containing messages in both Italian and Persian, are each distinct, recording the date when they were created, and containing an elaborate internal code that prescribes the order of the sentences on display. They contrast geometric European letters and flowing Persian calligraphy in checkerboard patterns, alternating bands, grids or cruciform shapes. The dates, carefully noted on each Arazzi grandi, mark a point of captivation for Boetti, as he was deeply interested in the concept of time and its inevitable passing. The embroidery of each map normally took one to two years and, in some cases, much longer due to geopolitical events. Following the closure of the Afghan border, Boetti was forced to abandon this practice and work remotely from Italy. This work began in his studio in Rome, with the artist outlining the countries in felt-tip pen onto linen, before sending the cloth framework to Afghanistan. The invasion of Afghanistan by Russian troops in 1979 shifted production completely from Kabul to

Peshawar Peshawar (; ps, پېښور ; hnd, ; ; ur, ) is the sixth most populous city in Pakistan, with a population of over 2.3 million. It is situated in the north-west of the country, close to the International border with Afghanistan. It is ...

in Pakistan, where the group of Afghan women had taken refuge and where Boetti was only able to reconnect with them through middlemen. It also halted production completely until 1982, with only a few maps being made between 1982–1985 During the 1980s Boetti visited Pakistan to meet the men organizing the embroidery. As a European male, however, Boetti was not allowed to visit the camps. He therefore asked photographer

Randi Malkin Steinberger Randi Malkin Steinberger (born 1960) is an American photographer, documentary filmmaker, and a published author. Steinberger collaborated with renowned artist Alighiero Boetti on two books: ''Accanto al Pantheon'', published by Prearo Editions in M ...

, with whom he had collaborated on the book ''Accanto al Pantheon'' in Rome, to go to Peshawar in 1990 to photograph the craftswomen at work. A chief example of this series, ''Mappa del Mondo, 1989'' ("Map of the World, 1989"), is on view in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (see ''Key Works'').

Exhibitions

Having shown in Milan and Turin, Boetti was invited by

Harald Szeemann '' Harald Szeemann (11 June 1933 – 18 February 2005) was a Swiss curator, artist, and art historian. Having curated more than 200 exhibitions, many of which have been characterized as groundbreaking, Szeemann is said to have helped redefine the r ...

to participate in the seminal exhibition "Live in your Head. When Attitudes Become Form" in 1969. Boetti had his first US solo exhibition in New York at John Weber Gallery in 1973. In 1978, he held an anthological exhibition curated by

Jean-Christophe Ammann Jean-Christophe Ammann (14 January 1939 – 13 September 2015) was a Swiss art historian and curator. Life and work Born in Berlin, Ammann, son of a chemist, grew up in a German-speaking family in Fribourg. He actually wanted to become a doctor ...

at the

Kunsthalle Basel Kunsthalle Basel is a contemporary art gallery in Basel, Switzerland. As Switzerland's oldest and still most active institution for contemporary art, Kunsthalle Basel forms a vital part of Basel's cultural centre and is located next to the city's ...

that featured historical works alongside more recent ones. He was the subject of a retrospective in 1992 that traveled to Bonn and Münster, Germany, and Lucerne, Switzerland. He was honored with several exhibitions after his death, most notably at the

Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna The ("national gallery of modern and contemporary art"), also known as La Galleria Nazionale, is an art gallery in Rome, Italy. It was founded in 1883 on the initiative of the then Minister Guido Baccelli and is dedicated to modern and contempora ...

, Rome (1996); the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Vienna in 1997; the

Museum für Moderne Kunst The Museum für Moderne Kunst (''Museum of Modern Art''), or short MMK, in Frankfurt, was founded in 1981 and opened to the public 6 June 1991. The museum was designed by the Viennese architect Hans Hollein. Because of its triangular shape, it i ...

in Frankfurt am Main in 1998;

Whitechapel Gallery The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the fir ...

, London (1999); and

Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein The Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein ( English: ''Liechtenstein Museum of Fine Arts'') is the state museum of modern and contemporary art in Vaduz, Liechtenstein. The building by the Swiss architects Meinrad Morger, Heinrich Degelo and Christian Kere ...

, Vaduz. The artist took part in

Documenta ''documenta'' is an exhibition of contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. The ''documenta'' was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau (Federal Horticultura ...

s 5 (1972) and 7 (1982) and the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

(1978, 1980, 1986, 1990, 1995). In 2001, the Venice Pavillon was completely dedicated to Alighiero e Boetti's work. In 2012, for the exhibition Game Plan, a significant number of works have been lent to the

MoMA Moma may refer to: People * Moma Clarke (1869–1958), British journalist * Moma Marković (1912–1992), Serbian politician * Momčilo Rajin (born 1954), Serbian art and music critic, theorist and historian, artist and publisher Places ; Ang ...

by Tornabuoni art Gallery.

Select exhibitions

* Galleria Christian Stein, Turin, Italy, 1967 * ''Arte Povera'', Galleria La Bertesca, Genoa, 1967 (group exhibition) * ''Shaman Showman'', Galleria De Nieubourg, Milan, Italy, 1969 * ''When Attitude Becomes Form'', curated by

Kunsthalle Bern The Kunsthalle Bern is a ''Kunsthalle'' (art exposition hall) on the Helvetiaplatz in Bern, Switzerland. It was built in 1917–1918 by the Kunsthalle Bern Association and opened on October 5, 1918. Since then, it has been the site of numerous ex ...

, Switzerland, 1969 (group exhibition) * ''Io che prendo il sole a Torino il 24 February 1969'', Galleria Sperone, Turin, Italy, 1969. * John Weber Gallery, New York, 1973 * ''Mettere al mondo il mondo'', Sperone-Fischer Gallery, Rome, Italy, 1973 * Kunstmuseum Lucerne, Switzerland, 1975. *

, curated by Jean-Christophe Amman, Basel, Switzerland, 1978 * Art Agency Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, 1980. * 44th

, Venice, Italy, 1990. * ''Synchronizitaet als ein Prinzip akausaler Zusammenhaenge'', Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany; Westfalischer Kunstverein, Munster, Germany; Kunstmuseum, Lucerne, Switzerland, 1992–1993 * ''Alternando da 1 a 100 e viceversa'', Centre National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble, Grenoble, France, 1993 *

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's o ...

, California, 1994 * P.S.1 Museum, Long Island City, New York, 1994. * ''Alighiero e Boetti'', part of the project, ''Origin and Destination'', Societe des Expositions du Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium, 1994 * ''Alighiero Boetti'', Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin, Italy; Musee d'Art Moderne, Villeneuve d'Ascq, France; Museum Moderner Kunst, Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, Austria, 1996–97 * ''Alighiero Boetti: Mettere al mondo il mondo'' ("Bringing the World into the World") –

, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and Galerie Jahrhunderthalle Hoechst, Germany, 1998 * ''Boetti; the maverick spirit of Arte Povera'',

Whitechapel Art Gallery The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the ...

, London, 1999 * ''Zero to Infinity, Arte Povera 1962–1972'' – Tate Modern, Londo

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, t ...

, Minneapolis, MN, 2001–200

* ''When 1 is 2: The Art of Alighiero e Boetti'' –

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is a not-for-profit institution in the Museum District, Houston, Texas, founded in 1948, dedicated to presenting contemporary art to the public. As a non-collecting museum, it strives to provide a forum for visual ...

, TX, 2002 * ''Quasi Tutto'', Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo, Italy, 2004. * 2012

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is ...

retrospective. * "Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan"

, NY, 2012.

Key works (selection)

* ''Mappa del Mondo, 1989'' ("Map of the World, 1989"), Afghan embroidery on fabric, Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New Yor

(image) * ''Tutto'' ("Everything"), 1994, Afghan embroidery on fabric, collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt am Main, German

(image ).

Art market

In 1995, the Archivio Alighiero Boetti, seated in Rome, was created for the issuance of certificates of authenticity for works by Boetti. In 2008, lawsuits were filed between Sperone Westwater Gallery (the artist's primary dealer at the time) and the Archivio Alighiero Boetti (and some family members) over the authenticity of 15 works exhibited and sold by the gallery its 2002 show "Simmetria Asimmetria". In a January 2008 suit by the archive against the gallery in Milan, the archive sought declaratory judgment that it is not liable to the gallery for not authenticating the works in dispute, and additionally claims that the gallery violated its "moral rights" by exhibiting, publishing, and selling works of art attributed to Boetti. Sperone Westwater, in return, sued the Boetti Archive in the

United States District Court for the Southern District of New York The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (in case citations, S.D.N.Y.) is a United States district court, federal trial court whose geographic jurisdiction encompasses eight counties of New York (state), New York ...

for what it alleges is a broad scheme to discredit it by capriciously questioning the authenticity of Boetti artworks it has shown and sold in the United States; this included one that was purchased by the

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

. In the New York suit, Sperone Westwater asked the judge to make a

declaratory judgment A declaratory judgment, also called a declaration, is the legal determination of a court that resolves legal uncertainty for the litigants. It is a form of legally binding preventive by which a party involved in an actual or possible legal mat ...

that the archive has no moral rights claims and also seeks damages "for the Defendants' injuries to the gallery's business and reputation," on counts of breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, negligent misrepresentation, and interference with business relations.Kate Taylor (1 May 2008)
Lawsuits Challenge Basquiat, Boetti Authentication Committees
''

New York Sun ''The New York Sun'' is an American online newspaper published in Manhattan; from 2002 to 2008 it was a daily newspaper distributed in New York City. It debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of the earlier New York ...

''.

References

External links

Website of the Alighiero Boetti Foundation (Fondazione Alighiero Boetti), in Italian:

Italian website of the Alighiero Boetti Archives, in English and Italian:
{{DEFAULTSORT:Boetti, Alighiero 1940 births 1994 deaths Artists from Turin Italian contemporary artists Italian conceptual artists Arte Povera Ballpoint pen art Italian embroiderers