For an artist not well known to the majority of American audiences, Alighiero Boetti lived a pretty action-packed life until his untimely death at the age of 54 in 1994. Boetti variously pioneered and disavowed the Arte Povera movement that took root in his birthplace of Turin, Italy, opened a hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan after discovering an intense affinity for the city, and played airmail pranks on his art-world co-luminaries, not to mention split himself into two separate artists named "Alighiero" and "Boetti," representing the binary of his rational and irrational sides. These exploits and more are documented in the Museum of Modern Art’s new sixth-floor Boetti retrospective, which makes the case for the artist as a mercurial, seminal figure in the development of Postmodernism, and a progenitor of the current vogue for semiotic art (most visible in the burgeoning popularity of Tauba Auerbach).

The exhibition, curated by MoMA’s Christian Rattemeyer in collaboration with the Reina Sofia and the Tate Modern, is called “Game Plan,” and each gallery underlines a specific artistic trick that Boetti played with himself, the art world, and his audience. The opening spread, a plinth laid with an array of early Arte Povera assemblage sculptures made from metal tubes, wood fragments, and bolts of fabric, has the improvisational feel of a corner bodega, a vibe which Boetti appreciated — an illustrative quote printed onto the gallery wall reads,  “I went to a supplier of building materials. It was thrilling to see the wonderful things that were there! … Some of the best moments in Arte Povera were hardware shop moments.” Like his colleagues Lucian Fabro, Michelangelo Pistoletto, and Giuseppe Penone, Boetti made art from the readymade industrial materials that surrounded him, with only slight augmentation by the artist’s hand.

Boetti renounced his association with the Arte Povera label, originated forged not by the artists themselves but critic Germano Celant, in 1972. The artist’s work was never solely about reassembling gritty materials into poetic sculptures; he played with language, signs, and communication systems in conceptually punning works like the 1967 “Rosso Gilera 60 1232/Rosso Guzzi 60 1305,” two panels labeled and colored with the eponymous paint of the iconic Italian motorcycle brand, and “December 16, 2040 – July 11, 2023” (1971), two engravings on brass of Boetti’s projected centennial and the death date he forecast for himself. These dates became obsessions for Boetti; in another piece of the same title, he had the two numbers embroidered by Afghani weavers into ornate fabric compositions. That work, a collaboration that saw the artist contribute found material in the form of the date and others provide the aesthetic execution, serves in the MoMA show to introduce museum-goers into the final stage of Boetti’s career.

In 1971, Boetti first traveled to Kabul, Afghanistan, and fell in love with the city (the likely-apocryphal story behind the trip is that the artist sold out a solo show, went to the airport, asked where the next flight was going, and took it). Until the 1979 Soviet occupation, he visited the country as often as twice a year, opening his One Hotel and collaborating with local weavers to create the work that has become his signature: hand-woven world maps in which countries’ borders are filled with their flags. One of the first maps, from 1971-72, is on display on the sixth floor while several others are installed in the atrium. In the works, Boetti has effectively removed himself from his artistic process: The earth exists as it does; nations form as they are; the flags are readymade. After the artist received a delightfully skewed world map with a pink ocean (shown in the atrium), he allowed the weavers to choose the background color as well.

Boetti didn’t disappear completely vanish behind the protocol of his art, however. As global politics changed the world map, the artist chose how to represent specific countries — at times marking Afghanistan not with the USSR flag, or even its own, but that of the mujahedeen. While he succeeded in his stated aim of “bringing the world into the world,” creating art that outlined or re-emphasized existing structures and systems rather than making new ones, Boetti’s own perspective was never lost. His work always retains that touch of humanity, empathy, and humor that makes him a unique voice that one hopes will be heard more often stateside.  

“Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan” runs at the Museum of Modern Art through October 1. Click on the slide show for a photo tour of the exhibition.