- BY ISSIMO
- February 20, 2024
On the mark: Giorgio Griffa’s immersive abstraction
Let Italy’s most romantic artworks sweep you away
Policromo verticale, Giorgio Griffa 1968. ( 240 x 360 cm)
Giorgio Griffa’s paintings represent a universal language in themselves. The Italian abstract artist has dedicated his career to exploring the role art plays in helping us understand ourselves and the world around us. Inspired by life’s rhythms, processes and complexities that find form in his brushstrokes, Griffa’s large-scale paintings immerse viewers in an experience of materiality that feels, somehow, eternal. His works continue to make their mark on the global contemporary art landscape.
Traditional technique to abstract expression
Born in Torino in 1936, Griffa loved painting as a child. Even as a young adult, he believed that painting should reflect an experience of culture and life as it unfolds around us. After an initial and brief career as a practising lawyer, Griffa assisted the Italian artist Filippo Scroppo, who painted both figurative and abstract works. Through the process of observing and learning from Scroppo, Griffa was initially moved to paint in a more formal and traditional style. By the late 60s, however, he was drawn to explore the expressive allure of abstraction.
Giorgio Griffa installing one of his canvases (1970). Credit to Paolo Mussat Sartor
Painted on lengths of canvas, Griffa’s large-scale compositions have defied categorisation by the contemporary art canon. While his early works were associated with movements including Minimalism, Arte Povera and even later with ‘Action Painting’, he continued to forge his own style based on a fundamental relationship with his materials. He perceives his hand to be the “servant” in a process unfolding on the canvas, reflecting the rhythms, patterns and complexities of life which he explores with his sensory intuition. Throughouthis career, Griffa has showcased his work on the world stage at several major international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (1978, 1980 and 2017).
Defining a stylistic signature
A Giorgio Griffa artwork is instantly recognisable to anyone who is familiar with his signature style. Often painting his works kneeling down on the floor, the artist begins with a large unstretched canvas that eventually evolves with its own organic characteristics, becoming part of the overall ‘artwork’ itself. Griffa’s approach to abstraction is like a ‘journal’ or record of his reflections, emotions and observations, expressed in the repetition of lines and marking or ‘signs’. Some viewers see ultimate simplicity in Griffa’s work, others see ultimate artistic truth, and others see both.
“Throughout his (Griffa’s) practice, he has sought ways to remove all the unnecessary parts of painting, and bring it back down to its core being and existence. You see this fluidity in a process, and a way of working, and a dedication to that process is seen in his works from the 1960s through to today,” said UK-based art curator and writer Sophie J Williamson.
With its luminous yellows and pale blush, teal and coral tones that border on pastel, Griffa’s colour palette seems to radiate a sense of lightness and possibility that is ultimately uplifting – certainly for us, anyway! When you see one of his works up close in a gallery or museum, you’ll notice the semi-translucent texture of his pigments, an effect he achieves by diluting his paints with water.
Whether it’s rows of tonal splotches in his painting Segni orizzontali (1975), or a rainbow of concentric circles in Quasi una spirale (2008), Griffa uses colour to implicate the viewer in his work, encouraging us to bring our own meaning to them based on life experiences and our perception of the world around us.
Where to find it: Galleria Borghese, Rome
Whether it’s rows of tonal splotches in his painting Segni orizzontali (1975), or a rainbow of concentric circles in Quasi una spirale (2008), Griffa uses colour to implicate the viewer in his work, encouraging us to bring our own meaning to them based on life experiences and our perception of the world around us.
The Griffa effect
“Giorgio really sees himself as part of a 400,000 year heritage of mark-making and painting, and sees the mark, or the brushstroke, or the line of the pencil as a sign which is both ubiquitous, but accessible to all of humanity,” said Sophie J Williamson, reflecting on the legacy of Griffa’s work and artistic style.
Griffa’s brush ‘speaks’ to each of us in very different ways, and it has done so for decades. With a long list of international solo exhibitions since the 60s, the artist’s works also appears in
public collections at major international galleries including Castello di Rivoli (Torino), Centre d’Art Contemporain (Geneva), Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas), Galleria d’Arte Moderna, (Rome), Obayashi Foundation (Tokyo) and Tate Modern (London).
His artistic style and approach to mark-making continues to exist in a category of its own, exploring the seemingly eternal potential of lines, marks and signs as part of a visual language that seeks to capture even the subtlest nuances of the world around us.
