Towards the end of his life, Alighiero Boetti focused increasingly on works on paper. These pieces showcase a wide range of techniques – drawing, collage, frottage, stencilling, tracing, spray-painting, stamping, and intricate wordplay. Cerebral, witty, and enigmatic, they offer a window into the inner workings of Boetti’s creative mind.

Unlike much of his earlier work, which often involved collaborators to challenge the idea of the solitary artistic genius and to explore themes of globalisation, geopolitics, and cultural exchange, many of these later works were made entirely by Boetti himself. This return to solo authorship was unusual in his practice and gives the works an introspective, almost diaristic quality. Free from narrative or chronology, they read as a visual stream of consciousness – a direct expression of his thought processes in graphic form.