I don’t represent anything. I paint. It is paint that has to speak, not me.
In 1936 Giorgio Griffa was born in Torino, who had a close relationship with painting since he was a kid, while studying from different artists in Circolo degli Artisti of his city. Even so, he completed his degree in law in 1958, practicing since then his profession of lawyer. The connection with abstract elements in his painting came in the mid-1960s, shortly after he was a student of the abstract painter Filippo Scroppo, with whom he was from 1960 to 1963.
From this moment his trajectory is associated with reflection on the state of painting, its tools and the artist condition. Griffa seeks the formal essence of painting through works that prove its artificial condition. Later, he got in touch with Art Povera through Gallery Seprone, with whom you will be associated regularly, in the same way that with Pittura Pittura and Minimalism. But it is difficult to establish Griffa in a concrete art movement because his career is practically solitary. The artist, who considers himself a traditional painter, tries to put painting in the center of art, because it is the genre that better translates the emotional and rational impulses of artists.
We can find his work at several museums of Italian art, like Museo di Arte Contemporanea di Roma or Rivoli’s castle in Torino, as well as in other countries, like Tate Modern in England or Centre d’Art Contemporain in Switzerland. In addition, he has exhibited in a lot of European and North American galleries.
List of artworks
Sense títol , 1976
Sense títol , 1978
Sense títol , 1976
Sense títol , 1978
Press articles
1915 – 1995
Col·lecció Josep Suñol
Owing to the number of works in the collection, the first show included a selection of the most representative pieces dating from 1915 to 1995.
I sei sensi (The Six Senses)
Italia
A glimpse at the Josep Suñol Collection focusing on works by Italian artists from the second avant-garde such as Fontana, Battaglia or Longobardi.
Everything Solid Fades Away
In Three Acts
The second act, titled Everything Solid Fades Away, is a journey through a group of works that allow us to understand the extent to which the abstract pulsation did...
Italia. I sei sensi as seen by...
Visits that offer readings from different creative disciplines of contemporary Italian culture, and also analysis of specific aspects of the exhibited artworks
ITALIA. I sei sensi (The Six Senses)
Exhibition dedicated to the second avant-guard Italian artists present in the Suñol Soler Collection.
