(Turin 1940–1994 Rome) Rosso Corallo 102, 1967, on the reverse signed Alighiero Boetti, industrial paint, cardboard, cork, 70.5 x 70.5 cm, framed, (PP)

The work has been registered by the archivio Alighiero Boetti, Rome under the archive no. 7085.

Photo certificate: archivio Alighiero Boetti, Rome, 29 October 2012, no. 7085

Provenance: Private Collection, Rome
Galleria Seno, Milan
purchased there by the current owner -
Private Collection, Europe

Rosso Corallo 102 is one of the best examples of a series of monochromatic square-shaped paintings that Alighiero Boetti executed in 1967, at the acme of his involvement with the Arte Povera group.
Around 1966 he made the acquaintance of Turin artists, including Gianni Piacentino, Piero Gilardi, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Giulio Paolini, whose artistic activity at that time was a response to such American avant-garde movements as Pop, Minimal and Conceptual Art, which were quickly establishing themselves in Europe.
In those years, Boetti created a limited series of works in which different techniques and production materials are matched with relief letters and engraved phrases. The relief letters on wood, metal or cardboard panels constitute the work title, which often alludes, or exactly corresponds to the colour employed. In these works, the strictly conceptual meaning coincides tautologically with the sentence written in relief on the support.

”To write is to draw. (…) There are words that kill, words that hurt terribly, words like stones, very light words, real words as is true for the numbers. But if you really want something, you put it in writing. And then there are the brush marks, applied with simplicity and no skill, especially the marks in red, which is the first color”
(Alighiero Boetti interviewed by Francesca Pasini, Il gioco del doppio – La giungla colorata di Alighiero Boetti, “Il Manifesto”, 23 aprile 1987)