Alighiero Boetti Italian, 1940-1994
Mano Libera Pensieri Sciolti, 1981
Ballpoint pen on paper laid down on canvas
4 parts, 102.2 x 71.8 cm. (40 1/4 x 28 1/4 in.) each / 102.2 x 287.2 cm. (40 1/4 x 113 1/8 in.) total
Copyright The Artist
Further images
Alighiero Boetti’s Mano Libera Pensieri Sciolti (1981) is a remarkable example from his celebrated Biro series – a body of work that is at once conceptually rigorous and visually entrancing....
Alighiero Boetti’s Mano Libera Pensieri Sciolti (1981) is a remarkable example from his celebrated Biro series – a body of work that is at once conceptually rigorous and visually entrancing. This four-panel composition stands out for its use of two contrasting hues, a relative rarity within a series largely dominated by monochrome fields. It is one of only three polychrome Biro works from 1981 documented in the catalogue raisonné.
To produce the work, Boetti enlisted his studio assistants to meticulously fill large sheets of paper with dense, hatched marks of ballpoint pen, leaving only select areas untouched. Along the left-hand edge, the alphabet remains exposed, while a constellation of commas is scattered across the fields of colour. The viewer’s task is to decode the image by matching each comma to its corresponding letter, revealing the hidden phrase that gives the work its title: Mano Libera Pensieri Sciolti (“Free Hand, Loose Thoughts”).
From 1972 onwards, as he would later do with his embroidered Arazzi, Boetti developed a system of delegation, instructing his assistants in Rome to methodically fill sheets of paper with fields of biro ink, leaving only coded letters or symbols visible. Each drawing functions as a linguistic puzzle, governed by its own internal logic. Some conceal phrases to be uncovered through a system of alphabet and commas, while others present anagrams or cryptic arrangements of letters. Most are executed in a single colour – typically blue, red, orange, black, or green – while larger polyptychs shimmer with multiple tones, as in Mano Libera Pensieri Sciolti.
At their core, the Biro drawings are conceptual works, exploring the tension between uniformity and difference. The process appears mechanical – each area filled by hand, stroke by stroke – yet every assistant’s gesture introduces subtle variations in density, rhythm, and pressure. The repetition produces not monotony but a field of difference, echoing Deleuze’s notion that variation itself is a generative principle rather than a deviation from a model.
By designing the system but entrusting its execution to others, Boetti transforms authorship into collaboration. Human rhythm, fatigue, and imperfection become integral to the work’s texture. His coded systems demonstrate that meaning is relational – emerging through correspondences between letters, numbers, and colours – rather than fixed identities. The Biro drawings thus stand as living demonstrations of multiplicity: ordered yet unpredictable, collective yet singular.
Comparable examples from the Biro series are held in major public collections, including the Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione, Università degli Studi di Parma; Glenstone Foundation, Potomac; Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz; MAMbo, Bologna; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes; Musée Départemental d’Art Contemporain de Rochechouart; S.M.A.K., Ghent; Museo Madre, Naples; and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.
To produce the work, Boetti enlisted his studio assistants to meticulously fill large sheets of paper with dense, hatched marks of ballpoint pen, leaving only select areas untouched. Along the left-hand edge, the alphabet remains exposed, while a constellation of commas is scattered across the fields of colour. The viewer’s task is to decode the image by matching each comma to its corresponding letter, revealing the hidden phrase that gives the work its title: Mano Libera Pensieri Sciolti (“Free Hand, Loose Thoughts”).
From 1972 onwards, as he would later do with his embroidered Arazzi, Boetti developed a system of delegation, instructing his assistants in Rome to methodically fill sheets of paper with fields of biro ink, leaving only coded letters or symbols visible. Each drawing functions as a linguistic puzzle, governed by its own internal logic. Some conceal phrases to be uncovered through a system of alphabet and commas, while others present anagrams or cryptic arrangements of letters. Most are executed in a single colour – typically blue, red, orange, black, or green – while larger polyptychs shimmer with multiple tones, as in Mano Libera Pensieri Sciolti.
At their core, the Biro drawings are conceptual works, exploring the tension between uniformity and difference. The process appears mechanical – each area filled by hand, stroke by stroke – yet every assistant’s gesture introduces subtle variations in density, rhythm, and pressure. The repetition produces not monotony but a field of difference, echoing Deleuze’s notion that variation itself is a generative principle rather than a deviation from a model.
By designing the system but entrusting its execution to others, Boetti transforms authorship into collaboration. Human rhythm, fatigue, and imperfection become integral to the work’s texture. His coded systems demonstrate that meaning is relational – emerging through correspondences between letters, numbers, and colours – rather than fixed identities. The Biro drawings thus stand as living demonstrations of multiplicity: ordered yet unpredictable, collective yet singular.
Comparable examples from the Biro series are held in major public collections, including the Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione, Università degli Studi di Parma; Glenstone Foundation, Potomac; Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz; MAMbo, Bologna; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes; Musée Départemental d’Art Contemporain de Rochechouart; S.M.A.K., Ghent; Museo Madre, Naples; and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.
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