Giorgio Griffa

A dynamic electric blue stream floats around yellow eddies: Giorgio Griffa’s installation fitted, as originally conceived by the artist for the 25th edition of Luci d'Artista (2022-2023), with magical force into the setting of the Cavour Gardens, profoundly modifying the perception of place, of space. For the 26th edition (2023-2024), the design of AZZURROGIALLO was modified to be adapted to the new location at the Sambuy Gardens, in Piazza Carlo Felice.   

The artist has explained the motives that have “accompanied” him in this new experience: the thought of the unstable physical universe, of life, of elementary particles, an “immense indeterminate energy” in continuous transformation; a flow of energy like the flow of water. After a lifetime of work and research with the traditional tools of painting - paint, canvas - Griffa tackled light, aerial and environmental space. The artist’s work has always been the result of extreme concentration, at the beginning as well as in the later stages, with his extensive study of Matisse and the great theme of decoration, almost as a private matter...now he has faced the inevitable clash with the viewer, even the viewer whose gaze is not used to measuring himself against the work of art. New technique, new tools. Yet it is worth recalling a statement he made many years ago about the possibility of painting beyond the usual spaces.  

In 1989, for the exhibition Hic sunt leones in the former Giardino Zoologico, he wrote: “Painting needs the artefacts of man, wall, canvas, stands, paper, rooms or house fronts. A predominantly urban product, it has rarely measured itself against the trees, the leaves, the overbearingness of nature. It prefers to incorporate it into its system, as is the case with landscape painting, rather than go out into the open. It is therefore a great challenge. Instead of bringing the memory of a leaf to painting, trying to place the memory of painting among the leaves”. Griffa’s mark studiously imbibed the canvas, placing the colour on the blank medium; now it floats in space, redetermining it. The result is a work that is both dry and sumptuous, almost festively redundant compared to many past achievements. A luminous epiphany, with an irresistible allusion, not denied by the artist, to certain starry nights of Van Gogh’s paintings. 

Giorgio Griffa (1936), is present with important artworks in the GAM -Torino Collection and in many Italian and foreign museums. He has always focused his artistic practice on painting and on sign in its transposition on the surface of paper and canvas. He has an intense national and international exhibition career of over 150 solo exhibitions and in 2022, he has been celebrated by a retrospective at the Center George Pompidou in Paris and recent solo exhibitions include one at the Castello di Miradolo, Pinerolo (2024). 

Riccardo Passoni