Giorgio Griffa
Omaggio per i 90 anni
21 May 2026—1 November 2026
GAM, Torino, Italy
To mark the opening of the GAM’s new exhibition season, QUARTA RISONANZA, several galleries housing the permanent collections have also been refurbished. Among these, one gallery is dedicated to the work of Giorgio Griffa, a leading figure in contemporary painting.
The initiative forms part of a wider programme promoted by the Giorgio Griffa Foundation, in collaboration with leading national and international institutions, to celebrate the artist’s work on the occasion of his 90th birthday.
With a particular focus on the city of Turin and its surrounding area, during 2026 both the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art and the GAM are dedicating a room to the master as part of the reorganisation of their respective permanent collections, recognising the significance of the groups of works held.
The room features five works, including Impronta del pollice (1969), Due spugne (1969) and Linee orizzontali (1973) from the GAM’s collections, alongside the large canvas Campo giallo, campo azzurro (1986), on loan from a private collection.
The works document some key stages in Griffa’s artistic development from the late 1960s onwards, when the artist began a radical re-examination of the language of painting. His work is distinguished by a practice that endows the painterly gesture with a processual and open dimension: marks, lines and fields of colour are arranged on the raw canvas according to essential rhythms, leaving the temporality of the execution visible and embracing the unfinished as a structural principle. In dialogue with the analytical and conceptual explorations of the late 20th century, his painting takes the form of an investigation into the making of the image, in which the surface becomes a space of relationship between rule and variation, order and possibility.
The dedication of a gallery to Giorgio Griffa within the permanent collections of the GAM thus aims to highlight the continuity and relevance of a body of work which, originating in Turin, has made a decisive contribution to the renewal of contemporary painting.
In June 2026, the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts, USA, will open a major monographic exhibition of Giorgio Griffa’s work, featuring over 20 monumental works that span nearly sixty years of his career. The project is also supported by the American Academy and is the winner of the Italian Council’s 14th edition call for proposals, organised by the Ministry of Culture.