GIORGIO GRIFFA, Tribute for his 90th birthday

GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino Collections, 1st Floor From 21 May 2026

On the occasion of the opening of the GAM’s new exhibition season, THE FOURTH RESONANCE, several rooms within the permanent collection have also been newly reinstalled. Among them, one gallery space is dedicated to the work of Giorgio Griffa, a central figure in contemporary painting research.

The initiative is part of a broader programme promoted by the Giorgio Griffa Foundation, in collaboration with major national and international institutions, celebrating the artist’s work on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday.

With particular attention to the city of Turin and its territory, throughout 2026 both the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea and the GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino are dedicating a room to the artist within the reinstallation of their permanent collections, acknowledging the importance of the groups of works held in their collections.

The gallery at GAM presents five works, including Impronta del pollice (1969), Due spugne (1969), and Linee orizzontali (1973) from the GAM collections, alongside the large-scale canvas Campo giallo, campo azzurro (1986), on loan from a private collection.

Giorgio Griffa, Due spugne, 1969, acrilico su tela, 145 x 145 cm

The works document some of the key moments in Griffa’s artistic research beginning in the late 1960s, when the artist initiated a radical reflection on the language of painting.

His work is distinguished by a practice that entrusts the pictorial gesture with a processual and open dimension: signs, lines and fields of colour unfold across raw canvas according to essential rhythms, revealing the temporality of execution and embracing incompletion as a structural principle. In dialogue with the analytical and conceptual practices of the second half of the twentieth century, his painting emerges as an investigation into the making of the image, where the surface becomes a space of relation between rule and variation, order and possibility.

The dedication of a gallery room to Giorgio Griffa within the permanent collections of GAM thus aims to reaffirm the continuity and contemporary relevance of a practice that, originating in Turin, has contributed decisively to the renewal of contemporary painting.

In June 2026, in the United States, the Clark Art Institute will open a major monographic exhibition dedicated to Giorgio Griffa, featuring more than 20 monumental works spanning nearly sixty years of his career. The project is also supported by the American Academy in Rome and is a recipient of the Italian Council grant – 14th edition, promoted by the Italian Ministry of Culture.

GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e ContemporaneaVia Magenta, 31 – 10128 Turin, Italy

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