Alighiero e Boetti

The conditions for a life of passion were there, but I had to destroy them in order to salvage them." (Alighiero Boetti, 1969) An artist. His philosophy. His hands have the extraordinary power to invent a world that is always new, using the freest artistic invention possible while at the same time subverting its conventions. These two hands represent the concept of duality, the couple as an archetype of a culture in which everything contains its opposite. By placing opposites side by side one destroys in order to rebuild. Order and Disorder. Disorder and order. Alighiero e Boetti. This book offers a sophisticated portrait through previously unpublished works, treasures from private collections shown here for the first time; these works are a record of the artistic vision of a man who, first and foremost, was a philosopher of depth, subtlety and irony. Magazine covers (all dated 1986) were reproduced in monochrome graphite, creating "...a sense of time flowing, freezing a memory before time replaces it..." These covers, if we look at them again today, show us the same people and events in the news. Time has apparently stopped. As Boetti said, with dazzling intuition, "...what doesn't happen in a thousand years happens in a second..." And then there are the ingenious Lavoro postale (Postal Work) and Mappe (Maps) which never fail to astonish: works that are more masterpieces of thought than art. Born in 1940, Alighiero Boetti died too soon, in 1994, leaving a priceless artistic-conceptual legacy that would insure his continued presence. "I'm not leaving, I'm not staying." He was right.