Alighiero e Boetti – Voli Pindarici (Flights Of Fancy)

Genesi di un’opera (Origin of the artwork).

Comunicato stampa

«[…] 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.