Giorgio Griffa: Works 1965-2015

Andrea Bellini, ed.
Texts by Andrea Bellini, Luca Cerizza, Laura Cherubini, Martin Clark, Suzanne Cotter, Chris Dercon, Giorgio Griffa, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Marianna Vecellio

“Giorgio Griffa is one of the least-known Turin-born artists of the Arte Povera generation. Another precious ‘secret’ that the city of Turin, discreet and haughty as ever, has managed to keep under wraps—in this case for almost half a century. From the immediate post-war period, a singular group of young artists in the city helped write the history of European art in the second half of the twentieth-century. Together with now universally acclaimed figures, such as Alighiero Boetti, Giuseppe Penone, Giulio Paolini, Giovanni Anselmo, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gilberto Zorio, and Mario and Marisa Merz, there were also other leading artists in Turin, who have only recently begun to receive the international attention they deserve. Here I am thinking of the likes of Piero Gilardi, Gianni Piacentino, Carol Rama, Salvo, and Aldo Mondino, but also of the eccentric and eclectic Carlo Mollino. Griffa was one of the most discreet and isolated in this group of young people who revolved around Sperone’s gallery. He immediately showed an exclusive interest in painting, while his companions mainly moved out towards sculpture and installation from the mid-sixties.”—Andrea Bellini
Published on occasion of the cycle of exhibitions dedicated to the work of Giorgio Griffa (Turin, 1936) (Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva; Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Serralves, Porto; Bergen Kunsthall; and Fondazione Giuliani, Rome) this monograph aims—through a series of essays by Andrea Bellini, Luca Cerizza, Laura Cherubini, Martin Clark, Suzanne Cotter, and Chris Dercon, a conversation between Griffa and Hans Ulrich Obrist, and a selection of artist’s writings and a chronology compiled by Marianna Vecellio—to highlight the very diverse features and extraordinary richness of Griffa’s paintings.