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1940-1994
TUTTO

measurements
190 by 290cm.

alternate measurements
74 3/4 by 114 1/4 in.

embroidered tapestry

Executed in 1988-89.

PROVENANCE

Matteo Boetti, Rome
Galleria Tornabuoni, Milan
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

LITERATURE

Bruno Corà, Boetti, Milan 2005, pp. 198-199, illustrated in colour

NOTE

This work is registered in the Archivio Alighiero Boetti, Rome, under number 3463

"Tutto emerges from a vision of the world in which everything meets. It also presents a notion of 'fullness', understood as the ability to encompass everything, as the desire to dissolve one's own self (Perdita d'identità) in the indistinct flow of live and its countless fragments."
Antonella Soldaini, 'Alighiero e Boetti' in Exhibition Catalogue, London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Alighiero e Boetti, 1999, p. 23

Tutto belongs to an important and extremely rare series of Boetti's embroideries, executed in the last fifteen years of his life. However, the key idea underlying this work, the representation of the universal whole in all its creation, was of pivotal importance throughout his whole life.

In 1969, the artist conceived a work, subsequently destroyed, entitled Pack. Essentially a circular block of cement, Pack naturally formed a pattern of irregular cracks across its surface during its drying process. The unique character of each of these cracks was expressed upon individual examination. But, when observed entirely, they were overwhelmed by the outline of the whole. As Anne-Marie Sauzeau noted, for Boetti this discovery within Pack, was "the primordial and unitarian representation of the world, a compact mass similar to the Danish coast's ice slabs, more or less joined together. A kind of disconnected puzzle that is adrift, that gradually differentiates and proliferates like a cellular division, or in the same way continents drift." (Exh. Cat., Alighiero Boetti 1965-1994, Turin, 1996-1997, p. 41)

The nature of Pack, in which the necessarily abstract shapes represented an almost elemental glimpse of an undetermined universe, informed much of Boetti's work, including Tutto. In these works, objects from everyday life find themselves scattered in a non-hierarchical substrate, stacked on one another in seemingly random fashion. From a distance, the effect is of a wildly rhythmic phantasmagoria of random shapes and colours. However, on closer inspection, forms reveal themselves as individual objects from everyday experience.

A series of drawings Boetti executed in the 1980's, significantly titled Perdita d'identita (Loss of identity), exposes the process of abstracting the individual figurative images. In these, a hand, a toy, an animal or an aeroplane assumes an abstract nature when incorporated indistinctly into a broader composition. Each form is created from and incorporated into the next, so that the determination of the overall work eventually escapes the control of the artist himself; rather the composition seems to create itself.

According to the artist, the composition of Tutto should be very democratic, non-exclusionary and entirely disordered; the only rule being that each image's outline leads into another. Boetti explains the creative process as follows: "I asked my assistants to draw everything, every possible shape, abstract or figurative, and to amalgamate them until the paper sheet was saturated. Then I took the drawing to Afghanistan to get it embroidered with 90 kinds of different coloured threads, provided that there was an equal quantity of each of them. The different colour of each shape is chosen by the women. In order to avoid establishing any hierarchy among them, I use them all. Actually, my concern is to avoid to make choices according to my taste and to invent systems that will then choose on my behalf." (cited in A. Zevi, Alighiero e Boetti: Scrivere, Ricamare, Disegnare, Corriere della Sera, 19/1/1992)

This sense of ordered randomness reflected Boetti's interest in Sufism, a mystical tradition in Islam, which captivated the artist. Boetti spent a great deal of time conversing with Sufi scholars, including the poet Berang Ramazan, who the artist held in the highest esteem. A tenent of Sufism is the belief that the essence of truth is devoid of all form, yet inseparable from all forms, material and spiritual. This is evident in Tutto where an apparent abstraction is constructed of individual figurative parts.

In Boetti's other works, such as Maps of the World, or The Longest River in the World, the representation of reality is linked to a precise historical moment or geographical location. Tutto, however, represents the universal and the ubiquitous, an omniscient expression of continuous conception. As such, conceived toward the end of his life, we can consider this work a reflection of the world, a visual representation of pure artistic creation. As Shirazeh Houshiary has said, "If you could reach this small, minute, moment of now, it would contain all, from the beginning to the end of time; as if to say that it is the smallest part and yet the largest. Boetti reached the same conclusions; and even if a lifetime is not long enough to fully comprehend, I feel that he died too early. There was so much for him to do, but somehow maybe he saw it at the end of his life... The whole of humanity can be seen as a tiny drop that becomes one with the ocean. Perhaps he saw it as a whole. I feel that he did." (cited in Exh. Cat. Alighiero e Boetti, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1999, p. 73)