Alighiero Boetti - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, November 16, 2006 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York

  • Catalogue Essay

    “To my mind, the work of the embroidered map represents the supreme beauty. For these works, I made nothing, selected nothing in the sense that the world is made the way it is and I have not drawn it; the flags are those that exist anyway, I did not draw them; all in all, I have made absolutely nothing. Once the basic idea is there, the concept, then everything else is already chosen.” (Alighiero Boetti, quoted in Gagosian Gallery, eds., Alighiero e Boetti, New York, 2001, p. 25)


    Alighiero Boetti, working from his studio in Rome, designed tapestries such as our present lot, Mappa (argento), 1983, that present beautiful and intricate varieties of layer upon layer of silk threads, color and geography. Employing local Afghan women to embroider the fabrics, the deliberate workings of the artisans appear throughout the piece and broaden the spectrum of texture, revealing much more than immediately recognized layer upon layer. In this case, the individual hands at work on the composition lay bare the unique history of the fabrication process itself.

47

Mappa (argento)

1983
Embroidered tapestry.
44 x 65 1/2 in. (111.8 x 166.4 cm).
This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by the Archivio Alighiero Boetti, Roma.

Estimate
$600,000 - 800,000 

Sold for $688,000

Contemporary Art Part I

16 Nov 2006, 7pm
New York