Giorgio Griffa — interview: ‘Rhythm is the first instrument of man’s knowledge’

As a busy year draws to a close, the Turin-based abstract painter discusses his numinous abstract paintings

Portrait of Giorgio Griffa, 2022. Courtesy of the Artist and Xavier Hufkens, Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano.

by JOE LLOYD

Giorgio Griffa makes the blank space sing. The Italian painter (b1936) places his brushstrokes on burlap, cotton, hemp and jute canvas. Sometimes these strokes are just simple dashes, emerging from the corner of a space. On other occasions they are riotous eruptions of letters, numbers and arabesque curves, spreading across the dun-coloured canvas like the wings of iridescent insects. Reviewing his 2018 Camden Arts Centre exhibition A Continuous Becoming for Studio International, Veronica Simpson described one work as “a cosmic collage of empty space, mark-making and glorious, saturated sorbet colours”. Griffa’s marks always seem in dialogue with the emptiness, which stakes its claim as an aspect of art. His works seem to imply that nothing can ever be wholly complete. There is always something else that could have been done.

Griffa is a native of Turin, one of the great literary and artistic centres of modern Italy. Although he trained in painting as a child, he also studied law and began his career balancing legal practice in the mornings with art in the afternoon. His early work featured magical landscapes in the style of Giorgio de Chirico, rendered in oil paint. Everything changed in late 1967. After a period working for the avant-garde painter Filippo Scroppo, he discovered the metier that has been his since: abstract mark-making using water-based acrylic paint on unprimed, unstretched, unframed canvases, which are folded and then unfolded before being nailed to the wall.

Giorgio Griffa, Obliquo, 1969. Acrylic on canvas, pencil on canvas, 42 x 66.5 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels. Photo: Allard Bovenberg.

This interest in foregrounding raw materials relates to a desire to overthrow hierarchies. “I try to make works in which all the elements are protagonists, without an order of precedence,” he says. “My hand, my head, the colour, the brush, the canvas are all equally important.” It also ties him to his Italian contemporaries in the arte povera movement, who in their very different ways deployed throwaway materials. Yet while Griffa has been friends with several of the movement’s heroes, such as Alighiero Boetti, and though he exhibited at Gian Enzo Sperone’s influential Turin gallery, Griffa sees his devotion to painting as setting him apart. As he claims: “I am a traditional painter – at least I believe I am a traditional painter – and therefore I have never been arte povera.”

Griffa divides his work into 13 cycles. The first, Primary Signs (1967-), features single motifs arranged over the canvas, whether straw-like lines or square splotches, sometimes in one hue and sometimes in a dozen. From this starting point, his fields become more and more complex. The Contaminations series, beginning in the late 70s, sees various types of marks share space, while the Alter Ego series begun in 1979 takes inspiration from the compositions of artists from Paolo Uccello to Agnes Martin. In the 90s, he added text and numbers to his repertoire. Most of his works feature luscious colours that call to mind the pleasure-addled Mediterranean worlds of Henri Matisse and Yves Klein and the soft shades of tempera.

Giorgio Griffa, Disordine ED, 2024. Acrylic on canvas (pattina), 207.5 x 479 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels. Photo: Allard Bovenberg.

There has been an extended Griffa moment in the past decade, beginning with a 2015 exhibition at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Geneva and continuing through his 2018 show in Camden. This has been a busy year for Griffa. A survey opened at Castello di Miradolo outside Turin. This autumn, he exhibited early and new works at Xavier Hufkens Gallery, Brussels. These new pieces feature crystalline forms inspired by Griffa’s interest in cosmic entropy – as he calls it: “This extraordinary system whereby complexity produces elements of disorder in every order.” And in October, the Fondazione Giorgio Griffa opened its doors to the public. Housed in the former Michelin tyre factory that also serves as Griffa’s studio, its first exhibition, Inside, places his work in dialogue with six other artists who have worked within the same building.

Studio International spoke to Griffa from his studio.

Joe Lloyd: When did you start painting?

Giorgio Griffa: I started painting as a child. I was nine, 10 years old. My parents sent me to a traditional painter and I learned to do traditional painting.

JL: You began working as a figurative painter. Why did you move towards the abstract?

GG: I have never made a choice for abstraction. I find the controversy between figurative and abstract horrible. It has only done harm. I did not choose abstraction. I simply abandoned the figures, because at a certain point painting had developed in a way where the figures had become superfluous. I had to abandon it. Just as I had also abandoned, because it was superfluous, the definition of the painting. At a certain point, when I saw that I could no longer use the figures, I thought of Yves Klein’s monochromes.

My first abstract works were characterised by an idea of unfinishedness. There is a Zen thought where an act cannot be finished because time has already moved on. The essence of the moment is captured when the colour field is laid out.

Giorgio Griffa, Disordine CZ, 2024. Acrylic on canvas (bandera), 159 x 95 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels. Photo: Allard Bovenberg.

JL: Can you describe these first abstract paintings?

GG: The first abstract paintings were precise layers of monochrome, unfinished colour with a corner, a piece of canvas left blank.

I immediately moved on from that. In a short time, I started using the marks of the brush: straight marks and oblique marks, horizontal and vertical, narrow and wide brushes, along with fingerprints. I placed them all one after the other on the canvas in a rhythmic sequence, occupying the canvas as one occupies space by walking, one step after another.

JL: Your paintings have been compared to musical scores. Do you think this is an appropriate comparison?

GG: The rhythm is the first means, the first instrument of man’s knowledge, from the rhythm of the sowings and the harvests, from the rhythm of the sun and the stars.

JL: When did you start integrating numbers and letters into your works — and why did you begin?

GG: Numbers entered my work, if I remember correctly, at the beginning of the 90s. I had started a cycle of works which were all characterised by having three lines and an arabesque. And each single work, however, had to find its identity in the cycle. So, I thought of giving them identity by numbering them. One was the first, two the second, three the third and so on.

Giorgio Griffa, Disordine AI, 2023. Acrylic on canvas (pattina), 208 x 117 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels. Photo: Allard Bovenberg.

JL: Why do you work on unprimed canvases?

GG: The theoretical reason is that the canvas is traditionally placed in a hierarchical order by the painter. For millennia we have made canvases, we have primed them, we have stretched them. And they carry within them this memory of hierarchy.

In this, the painter is at the top and the canvas support was at the bottom, the most humble element. The canvas had to be absolutely perfect, without marks. In my work I think this hierarchy has been overturned. I try to make works in which all the elements are protagonists, without an order of precedence. My hand, my head, the colour, the brush, the canvas are all equally important.

JL: I have read that you paint on materials laid down on the floor. Why?

GG: I have to use a very soft, liquid colour. It has to be absorbed into the canvas, not rest on the canvas, because otherwise you cannot then fold the canvas. You must pull the canvas, then leave it so it cannot move. When colour penetrates the abstract in this way, the fabric maintains its quality and the colour does not lose its own qualities. This means that I have to paint on the floor because otherwise everything would run down. And the absorption of the colour into the canvas is a slow process. It takes at least 12 to 24 hours with my water-based paint. So, I need the canvas to remain horizontal until it is dry.

JL: Do you consider your work as part of arte povera?

GG: I am a friend of the artists of arte povera. I worked with them in some of their galleries. In my opinion, I have this same attitude that aims to create a dialogue with the intelligence of nature instead of dominating it: the abandonment of the principle of domination. But I am a traditional painter — at least I believe I am a traditional painter — and therefore I have never been arte povera.

Giorgio Griffa, Sedici tele due segni, 1979. Acrylic on canvas (pattina), 190 x 262 cm (each: 40 x 58 cm). Courtesy of the Artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels. Photo: Allard Bovenberg.

JL: What rules do you place on your practice?

GG: I only have two rules — well, and a third.

The first is about unfinishedness: a canvas is still unfinished when the image and message are laid down and you do not add anything more.

The second: use signs that belong to everyone. I don’t use any privileged signs of my own as a painter. I always use shared signs such as strokes and numbers, on one hand because I am part of a community, and on the other because it’s a gamble to see if I can make my own work using signs that belong to everyone.

The third rule that is added to those two: the form is only a result; it must not be a cage in which I lock myself.

JL: Many of the works I’ve seen featured colours that are rich but subdued, almost like watercolour. Why do you choose these hues?

GG: I don’t have a theory of colours, but maybe I have deep in my belly, inside me, the memory of a child looking at frescoes. I believe there is the memory of the Italian history of frescoes, the middle ages, ancient indeed.

JL: What is your ideal exhibition space?

GG: My ideal exhibition space is a place where people live and not a museum space. Where people eat, sleep, drink, talk, argue, love.

Giorgio Griffin: Empatia, installation view, Xavier Hufkens Gallery, Brussels, 13 September — 26 October 2024. Courtesy of the Artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels. Photo: Thomas Merle.


JL: You recently had an exhibition at Xavier Hufkens in Brussels. What has inspired your most recent works?

GG: My most recent works are inspired by entropy, this extraordinary system whereby complexity produces elements of disorder in every order. The elements of disorder can then be abandoned, can remain as is, or can in turn become ordered, grow and become a new order themselves.

In reality, this growth of entropy that is theorised by physicists is a continuous creativity. It fascinates me because it is a process that cannot end, it is always dynamic, it surpasses our own concept of perfection. The perfect is static, whereas the universe is all dynamic.

JL: Last year you established the Fondazione Giorgio Griffa. Tell me about it.

GG: Foundation Giorgio Griffa, I can’t say anything, because this is something that my son and my nephew did! The family sees me getting old, and I can only paint – so they took care of that.

Installation view of Inside at Fondazione Giorgio Griffa, Turin, 25 October — 28 November 2024. Courtesy Fondazione Giorgio Griffa. Photo: Frederico Rizzo.

JL: How has Turin changed during your life as a painter?

GG: The Castello di Rivoli Museum arrived, the Artissima art fair arrived, new galleries have arrived, old galleries have closed. It has changed little, it has changed a lot. It depends on your point of view.

• Inside is at Fondazione Giorgio Griffa, Turin, until 12 December 2024; Giorgio Griffa: A Line, Montale, and Something Else is at Castello di Miradolo, San Secondo di Pinerolo, Turin, until 25 December 2024.

Giorgio Griffin: Empatia, installation view, Xavier Hufkens Gallery, Brussels, 13 September — 26 October 2024. Courtesy of the Artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels. Photo: Thomas Merle.