Alighiero Boetti was an Italian Conceptual artist and member of the Arte Povera movement. Born in Turin, Italy on December 16, 1940, he dropped out of business school to study art independently and formed close relationships with the artists Luciano Fabro and Michelangelo Pistoletto. Boetti used a wide variety of materials for his work—including ball point pens and postal stamps—to make a series of maps and graphical charts of the world. “I went to a supplier of building materials. It was thrilling to see the wonderful things that were there!” the artist observed. “Some of the best moments in Arte Povera were hardware shop moments.” In 1967, following the Israeli Six-Day War, he created Twelve Shapes Starting...