Magazzino Italian Art Presents “Bochner Boetti Fontana,”

Here you can see Alighiero Boetti’s ‘Teresa Giancarlo Carlotta Beatrice,’ 1977. In 1973, Alighiero Boetti began to create drawings known as ‘Biros’ using the technique of hatching with a ball point pen on paper. Boetti assigned his studio assistants to execute the hatching based on a composition he conceived.

Typical of Boetti, these works are interactive games based on a set of rules that the viewer must decipher. Each sheet contains a word that is decoded by aligning the alphabet running along the vertical axis with the commas positioned on the horizontal axis. In this case, the words are a portrait of the artist’s friends, offering a unique reflection on the concept of identity. The names reveal Teresa, the wife; Giancarlo, her husband; and Carlotta and Beatrice, their children. In his ‘Biros,’ Boetti explored the theme of ‘the double’ by splitting the authorship of the work between himself and his assistants and interweaving the practices of drawing and writing. The viewer is invited to actively engage in deciphering the literal meaning of the work.