Giorgio Griffa's 'Quasi Tutto' Exhibition Surveys Four Decades of Abstract Painting

The exhibition 'Giorgio Griffa, Quasi Tutto' at an unspecified venue brings together over forty paintings and thirty drawings spanning 1969 to 2015. Griffa, a major figure in Italian abstract painting, began his signature style in Turin in the late 1960s, painting horizontal lines and zigzags in light tones on unstretched canvases nailed to walls. His work emphasizes rhythm, immediacy, and the performative act of painting, with the artist's hand and body movement integral to the composition. Griffa paints on raw canvas laid on the studio floor; fold marks from storage become part of the work, blurring the line between artwork and support. His practice reduces painting to raw attributes—unprimed canvas, limited palette, abstract lines and color fields—highlighting cognitive rather than narrative aspects. The series 'Alter Ego' (1979) pays homage to painters like Tintoretto, Paolo Uccello, Henri Matisse, Yves Klein, Brice Marden, and Agnes Martin. Griffa's interests extend to science, mathematics (the Golden Ratio), Zen philosophy, and the Fibonacci sequence, influenced by Mario Merz. Numbers entered his vocabulary in the 1990s. He cites James Joyce on poetry exploring hidden worlds. The exhibition was preceded by shows at the Centre d'Art Contemporain de Genève, Kunsthalle Bergen, and Fondazione Giuliani in Rome in 2015.