Giorgio Griffa's First US Solo Museum Show Opens at Clark Art Institute
The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, is hosting Giorgio Griffa's inaugural solo museum exhibition in the United States, titled "Paths in the Forest," which will run until October 12, 2026, aligning with his 90th birthday. Located within the Lunder Center, designed by Tadao Ando, the exhibition's name alludes to Dante's Inferno. Griffa's artistic approach, influenced by D.T. Suzuki and Matisse, challenges traditional pictorial forms, utilizing flat brushes and thin acrylics on unprimed canvases to create marks that merge large-scale billboard aesthetics with the intimacy of handwriting. His notable works, such as Canone aureo 958 (Agnes Martin) (2016) and the Segni series, explore themes of identity and memory, with recent pieces honoring Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. The exhibition is located at 225 South Street, Williamstown, MA.
Key facts
- "Paths in the Forest" is Giorgio Griffa's first American solo museum exhibition and coincides with his 90th birthday.
- The exhibition runs at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, through October 12, 2026.
- It is installed in the Tadao Ando-designed Lunder Center at Stone Hill.
- The title references the opening canto of Dante's Inferno and the walk through the Berkshire woods to the gallery.
- Griffa works on the floor with flat brushes and thin acrylic on unprimed, unstretched canvases.
- His influences include D.T. Suzuki's Zen aesthetics and Matisse, called his "tutelary god" by art historian Flaminio Gualdoni.
- Canone aureo 958 (Agnes Martin) (2016) quotes Agnes Martin's essay "The Untroubled Mind."
- A 2025 catalogue statement counters the Principle of Domination: "In my work, marks bear their own identity, their own age-old memory, not mine."
Entities
Artists
- Giorgio Griffa
- Franklin Einspruch
- Tadao Ando
- Barnett Newman
- Yve-Alain Bois
- D.T. Suzuki
- Henri Matisse
- Agnes Martin
- Morris Louis
- Kenneth Noland
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty
- Joanna Fiduccia
- Caravaggio
- Allen Ginsberg
- Jack Kerouac
- Dante
- Longfellow
- Flaminio Gualdoni
- Walter Darby Bannard
Institutions
- Clark Art Institute
- Fondazione Giorgio Griffa
- Tate
- Museum of Modern Art
- Institute for Advanced Study
- Pace Gallery
- Yale University
- The New Criterion
- Allworth Press
- Dissident Muse
- Two Coats of Paint
- Lunder Center at Stone Hill
Locations
- Williamstown
- Massachusetts
- United States
- Stone Hill
- Berkshire
- Italy
- Turin