Manifesto

Alighiero Boetti, Manifesto, 1967/70, print on paper, 100x70 cm, 800 copies

Author(s): Alighiero Boetti

Associated movement: Arte Povera

Language : Italian

Medium : Artwork

Original edition of the manifesto: Alighiero Boetti, Manifesto, 1967/70, print on paper, 100x70 cm, 800 copies

Where can we find this manifesto?

Which critic recognizes the work as a manifesto ? or: Typical characteristics of a manifesto

Editorial comments: In this work, Boetti plays with the internal and external codes of the manifesto genre. "Manifesto" is a poster that the artist had printed by Tipografia Manifesti in Turin in 800 copies on paper of five different colours - pink, green, white, yellow and orange. Each manifesto featured the names of sixteen artists: Paolini, Fabro, Gilardi, Piacentino, Nespolo, Zorio, Pistoletto, Boetti, Simonetti, Kounellis, Ceroli, Pascali, Icaro, Mondino and Merz. All of them can be linked to Arte Povera, a label that Germano Celant had just created around an exhibition ("Arte Povera-Im Spazio", galleria La Bertesca, Gêne, 27 September-20 October 1967) and a 1967 text that has taken on the value of a manifesto in retrospect: "Arte Povera. Appunti per una guerriglia". In his Manifesto, Boetti presents and promotes a collective identity. However, it is an identity whose programme is encrypted: next to each name, eight signs with hermetic meanings make defining the programme of this identity a challenge, a hook and a pitfall for understanding. Boetti claims to have deposited the key of this code with a notary, but no one has been able to find it and, according to a number of specialists and the artist's daughter , it never existed.