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Lot Essay
‘My planes are real, they exist and fly every day! They go everywhere, in every direction and travel around the entire world. They are free and also so beautiful!’
Alighiero Boetti
In Alighiero Boetti’s Cieli ad alta quota (1987), exquisitely drawn aeroplanes whizz and caper across an ultramarine sky. Each aircraft’s silhouette stands out white against the rich blue backdrop: they are painted in phosphorescent pigment, which glows in the dark. Created contemporaneously to the acclaimed Mappe tapestries, the Aerei testify to Boetti’s desire to transcend global geopolitical and ideological divisions, as he integrated modes of cultural interchange, traditional craftsmanship and collaboration into the very fabric of his art production. He would draw the forms of the aeroplanes himself before employing assistants to fill in the space between them. These collaborators laid down colour using media including biro, tempera, ink and watercolour, with the varied hands involved resulting in myriad possibilities of subtle difference across the series. Beyond this conceptual backdrop, Boetti’s guiding philosophy of ‘order and disorder’ is reflected in the miraculous mobility of the composition. With an international array of fighter jets, passenger planes, cargo craft and early propeller engines brought impossibly together, the planes in Cieli ad alta quota fly freely among one another, and seem ready to escape the boundaries of the pictorial frame. It is a dreamlike vision, momentarily suspending the realities of time and space. Hovering within an imaginary, bustling celestial expanse, the planes criss-cross one another, forging a network of invisible trails as they make their way towards destinations unknown.
Alighiero Boetti
In Alighiero Boetti’s Cieli ad alta quota (1987), exquisitely drawn aeroplanes whizz and caper across an ultramarine sky. Each aircraft’s silhouette stands out white against the rich blue backdrop: they are painted in phosphorescent pigment, which glows in the dark. Created contemporaneously to the acclaimed Mappe tapestries, the Aerei testify to Boetti’s desire to transcend global geopolitical and ideological divisions, as he integrated modes of cultural interchange, traditional craftsmanship and collaboration into the very fabric of his art production. He would draw the forms of the aeroplanes himself before employing assistants to fill in the space between them. These collaborators laid down colour using media including biro, tempera, ink and watercolour, with the varied hands involved resulting in myriad possibilities of subtle difference across the series. Beyond this conceptual backdrop, Boetti’s guiding philosophy of ‘order and disorder’ is reflected in the miraculous mobility of the composition. With an international array of fighter jets, passenger planes, cargo craft and early propeller engines brought impossibly together, the planes in Cieli ad alta quota fly freely among one another, and seem ready to escape the boundaries of the pictorial frame. It is a dreamlike vision, momentarily suspending the realities of time and space. Hovering within an imaginary, bustling celestial expanse, the planes criss-cross one another, forging a network of invisible trails as they make their way towards destinations unknown.