«[…] blue skies where hundreds of airplanes whirl […], carries a breath of genius folly. There is no title and the authors are double, nay triple: Alighiero, Boetti and Fuga» wrote Maurizio di Puolo in the article Alighiero Boetti & Guido Fuga appearing on Il Messaggero on 2 December 1977.
Alighiero Boetti started a substantial series of illustrations representing airplanes that year, which came in various versions using pencil, watercolour and ballpoint pen on paper. Like for other works, Boetti entered into a collaboration, this time with cartoonist and architect Guido Fuga, a precious and close collaborator of the celebrity cartoonist Hugo Pratt.

In this series, conceived and realised with Fuga, Boetti enables us to access fundamental issues of his poetics, such as perception between mobility and stability, between the finite and infinite worlds that find room within a composition of figurative elements designed in negative form over a monochromatic, coloured sky. Observers are encouraged to step, carefree, into this universe, teetering between reality and imagination. This will take them back in time to a playful dimension that is exactly the one of childhood imagination, but going further into a depth of meanings based on the combination/contrast between order and chaos.

The show enables us to step backwards and discover the creative process and collaboration between Boetti and Fuga. Fuga allowed us to access his personal archive of sketches on paper, preparatory materials for the Aerei (airplanes) series, posters, paper invites and photos of that period. These works are presented in a completely new manner, and had never been put together in an exhibition. The works include Aereo in black ballpoint pen from 1977, among the first, if not the first creation resulting from the Boetti-Fuga collaboration. To confirm Boetti’s openness to collaboration, the exhibition showcases selected works originating from work carried out with Alitalia, Twinings and Austrian Airlines (Cieli ad Alta Quota, or Skies at a High Altitude, a set of 6 puzzles created in collaboration with Hans Ulrich Obrist). 

Voli Pindarici (Flights of Fancy) is strictly correlated to a concept of going beyond, intended as a real flight but also – and mainly – one of fantasy, replacing physical mobility with imagination. Airplanes are at the forefront, but also refined postal works are displayed, recalling conceptual American mail art. The idea of departing, but also of returning, can be found within these heavily-stamped envelopes that expand the sense of time and space. The envelopes feature handwritten addresses connected with the Boetti family, creating a connection with another artwork on display that has deep sentimental significance and presents a game of numbers connected with the birth of the family (15 and 16) and in the background, airplanes circling in a blue backdrop.

Ph. Guido Fuga, archivio personale

Ph. Michela Pedranti

Ph. Guido Fuga, archivio personale

Alighiero Boetti

Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994) – or Alighiero e Boetti as he signed off from 1971 – was born in Turin, where he started working within the realm of Arte Povera in January 1967. In 1972 he moved to Rome, an environment that was a better fit with his love of the world’s south. The previous year, he had discovered Afghanistan and had started an artistic effort that he outsourced to Afghani embroiderers, including the Maps, the colourful planispheres that he would then present over and over again during the course of the years, as a log of political change in the world.

He was a conceptual, versatile and kaleidoscopic artist, who extended his range of works and – in specific cases – outsourced their realisation with very strict rules to other subjects and other hands, following the principle of “necessity and chance”. Hence the ballpoint pens (blues, blacks, reds, greens), whose cross-hatched backgrounds showcase language; hence the embroidered letters, small or large, and colourful; hence Tutto (Everything), thick puzzles where all sorts of forms can be seen, including silhouettes of objects and animals, images taken from magazines or printed paper, and a lot more – really, everything.

Lavori Postali (Postal Works) are also featured – these are pieces toying with the mathematical permutation of stamps, the random adventure of the postal journey, and the secret beauty of the sheets of paper held within an envelope. Another segment of Boetti’s work, in his undoubted own hand, displays lots of “exercises” on squared paper from the early 70’s, based on musical or mathematical rhythms. Subsequently, delicate compositions on paper bear hordes of animals recalling Etruscan or Pompeiian decorations. Time, and its fascinating and unavoidable passing, could be the unifying theme of the plurality of type and iconography of Boetti’s work.

Alighiero Boetti exhibited within the most emblematic shows of his generation, from When Attitudes Become Form (1969) to Contemporanea (1973), from Identité Italienne (1981) to The Italian Metamorphosis 1943-1968 (1994). He participated at the Venice Biennale often, with a personal room at the 1990 edition, a retrospective tribute in 2001 and a large exhibition at Fondazione Cini in the recent 2017 edition.

Among the most significant recent exhibitions, we may count the great retrospective Game Plan in three prestigious seats (MOMA in New York, Tate in London, Reina Sofia in Madrid). Of his large body of works, many are held by Italian and international museums, including the Pompidou in Paris, Stedelijk Museum, MOCA in Los Angeles, etc. His art, and his standing as an artist, strongly influenced the generation after him and today’s artists, both in Italy and abroad.

Guido Fuga

In 1968, Guido Fuga (Venice 1947), a student in architecture, met Hugo Pratt, and started a collaboration, the so-called special effects: backgrounds, airplanes, junk ships, trains, armoured cars… that would continue up until Pratt’s last strips. Between 1970 and 1973, he travelled to India twice with his legendary Volkswagen. The second trip lasted 6 months, at a time when Afghanistan was ruled by a king and was a hippy paradise. In 1977, in the apartment opposite his (it was destiny), he met his friend Gianni Michelagnoli’s guest, artist Alighiero Boetti, likewise enamoured of Afghanistan. He had gone there in 1971 and had stayed at the One Hotel in Kabul, a tiny, one-room hotel. During a night of smoking and storytelling, the seed was planted for a collaboration, and they realised Aerei. In the 80’s, there followed a series of watercolours on the same theme, Cieli ad Alta Quota (High Altitude Skies).

He collaborated for a short time with the satirical weekly “Il Male”.

He curated Pratt’s monographic exhibition at the Grand Palais and organised its staging. After Paris, it went on to Milan, Venice, Rome, Naples and Buenos Aires for Italiana 86.

He collaborated with Mario Schifano on a collection of rugs created in India, a country he continues to visit and where on top of the rugs, he commissioned inlaid marble tables from Udaipur artisans.

After Hugo Pratt’s death in 1977, with Lele Vianello he realised Corto Sconto, Corto Maltese’s guide to Venice for Lizard publishers, and in French for Castermann. There followed Navigar in Laguna Fra le Isole Fiabe e Ricordi with Mare di Carta and Marco Polo, Testimonianze di un Viaggio Straordinario with Linea d’Acqua.

In 1999, for a few months, he collaborated on the cover stories of the tv show Sgarbi Quotidiani.

In 2003, for RAISAT Gamberorosso with his colleague Lele Vianello, he curated ten episodes on their book Navigar in Laguna, then creating the comic book Le Ali del Leone in collaboration with the Air Force magazine. In 2020, again with Lele, there followed Cubana, a comic strip story inspired by their master Pratt.

In 2018, he produced the diary Merchant of Venice with watercolours on the traveller searching for the most precious essences. The exhibition on Perfume illustrations was presented at Palazzo Moncenigo in Venice. He contributed a project to Cleto Munari’s artist’s illustration collection, Essenza di Marmo in 2021. 

In 2023, he created 30 illustrations for Nicolò Manucci’s wonderful travels, to be presented at Palazzo Vendramin Grimani during the exhibition dedicated to the Venetian traveller from 29 April.

SELECTED WORKS

GUIDO FUGA, Boetti & Fuga Production, 1978

ALIGHIERO E BOETTI, lavori postali