THE HAGUE.- Originally a member of the Arte Povera movement, Italian artist Alighiero Boetti (1940–1994) quickly took a different direction of his own. From the 1970s, he specialized in colourful, playfully inventive embroideries produced for him in Afghanistan. The works seem to reflect a mysterious system in which a major role is played both by compositions featuring letters and words and by maps of the world. Thanks to former gallery holder and collector Tanya Rumpff, who has made the museum a large donation of these ‘Arazzi’ of the 1979 – 1993 period, the Gemeentemuseum has instantly acquired a marvellous selection of items from Boetti’s multi-faceted oeuvre. The new acquisitions are on show from 23 March in the Alighiero Boetti - Arazzi exhibition in the Project Room.

At the start of his career, Boetti worked primarily with everyday materials sourced from hardware dealers in his home city of Turin. He used everything from PVC pipes and tubes to industrial lighting fixtures and paper doilies. In 1968, for example, he used stacked doilies to construct a two-metre Roman column (Colonna). The works of the 1970s, when Boetti was regularly travelling to Kabul, are entirely different. During one of his first visits, it occurred to him to ask his Afghan friends to get their wives to embroider texts which he created in the first instance in the form of silkscreen prints, multiples or conceptual works. The resulting traditionally made ‘Arazzi’ (Italian for tapestries) created new opportunities for Boetti: they enabled the serial production of unique artworks of rich significance without the need for any intervention on his part.

The Afghan weavers and embroiderers put their own stamp on many of Boetti’s Arazzi, for example by choosing the colours for the embroidered letters. Boetti saw this as a subversive act: a way of undermining the art world. His Arazzi play with the idea of ‘signature’ and ignore the distinction between ‘one-off’ and ‘serial ‘works’ – exactly those things that constitute the raison d’être of the art market.

TANYA RUMPFF COLLECTION
Tanya Rumpff collected these embroideries from the 1980s onward, working in close contact with the artist and his family. Fascinated by the subversive and poetic tone of Boetti’s works and driven by an avid desire for ownership, she succeeded in building up an unparalleled collection. Her donation comprises over thirty Arazzi, plus other works by the artist: a flag, a carpet, a vase, a clock and works on paper.

Benno Tempel: “We are extremely grateful to Tanya Rumpff for this generous gesture. Her donation gives added depth and breadth to our collection, in which conceptual art is strongly represented, for example by contemporaries of Boetti like Sol LeWitt and Donald Judd. Here in The Hague, moreover, the Arazzi will acquire an extra dimension by being viewed alongside our Mondrians. Boetti was mad about Victory Boogie Woogie and was inspired by it, particularly because of the power of Mondrian’s final masterpiece.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue (88 pages, soft cover, price € 24.50) in which the Tanya Rumpff collection is examined within the overall context of Boetti’s oeuvre. The publication includes essays by Benno Tempel, curator Hans Janssen and others.

The artworks by Alighiero Boetti are protected under copyright, these rights are managed by Pictoright. Please contact Pictoright if you want to reproduce any of these artworks. www.pictoright.nl. The following copyright line should be used; © Alighiero Boetti, title artwork, year of creation c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2019