Painting the invisible: Genoa, Giorgio Griffa on display at Palazzo Ducale

From March 22 to July 13, 2025, the rooms of the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa will host a retrospective dedicated to Giorgio Griffa (Turin, Italy, 1936), a painter from Turin who has indelibly marked the history of contemporary art. The exhibition, curated by Ilaria Bonacossa and Sébastien Delot, in collaboration with the Giorgio Griffa Foundation, traces more than fifty years of the career of an artist who knew how to combine abstraction, spirituality and gesturality in a unique and unmistakable pictorial language. The exhibition, titled Painting the Invisible, consists of more than 50 works ranging from large abstract canvases to new works on paper and installations, creating a profound sensory experience. With a strong emphasis on the encounter between Griffa’s painting and the historicity of the architecture of the Ducal Palace, the exhibition becomes a dialogue between the pictorial sign and the sacredness of the spaces. One of the special features of this monograph is the presence of a tribute to the poet Eugenio Montale, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the publication of his famous collection Ossi di seppia. This link between visual art and poetry further enriches the experience of the exhibition, suggesting deep reflection on the meaning and beauty hidden behind words and colors.

“Giorgio Griffa’s work has the silent power of water in its transformative capacity that stages a poetic and hypnotic temporal suspension,” argues Ilaria Bonacossa, director of Palazzo Ducale and co-curator of the exhibition.

“Giorgio Griffa understood the importance of oblivion, a necessary process to access and give depth to sensitive time,” explains Sébastien Delot. “Giving life to a stroke, a line, a form allows him to express his relationship with the secular memory of painting. Painting becomes the site of memory spaces. Like a musician, this painter from Turin proposes subtle variations around space, color and line. He constantly has to forget everything in order to get as close as possible to the origin. It is a great joy to work with Giorgio Griffa and Ilaria Bonacossa to create this exhibition at Palazzo Ducale, in this city that, in the late 1970s, hosted two exhibitions aimed at offering the public a history of painting endowed with an inner light.”

The artist and his evolution

Giorgio Griffa has been a leading figure on the contemporary art scene, with a career studded with international success and recognition. The painter has participated in no fewer than three editions of the Venice Biennale, in 1978, 1980, and 2017, and is the protagonist of more than 200 solo exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world. His work stands out for its originality and evocative power, with painting that is more than just a visual representation: it is an invitation to get in touch with the invisible world that permeates every gesture.

Griffa’s language, in fact plunges into an inner dimension, where sign and color become tools to explore the invisible, the unspoken, the mysterious. His art is strongly influenced by Zen spirituality, which suggests a reflection on the ephemeral, the present moment, the infinite potential of each pictorial gesture. His painting is abstract, but not far from reality; it is an exploration that goes beyond shapes and colors, trying to communicate a dimension beyond the visible.

Notes on the artist

Giorgio Griffa was born in Turin in 1936 and began painting as a child. As early as the mid-1960s, his canvases reveal the first elements of abstraction, along with a deep reflection on the role and status of painting. Beginning with the Primary Signs cycle of 1967/68, he developed a system of working on unprepared, free-standing canvases painted directly on the ground. The strokes and lines that characterize this work seem to be able to be executed by anyone’s hand.

Right from the start, Griffa established himself as one of the protagonists of the artistic debate emerging from the Informal movement and placed himself between Pop Art, Minimalism and Conceptual Art. In his first steps as an artist, he is close to his Arte Povera friends, with whom he shares a deep respect for the intelligence of matter. After more than fifty years of career and thirteen painting cycles, Griffa’s path remains unique and develops outside any specific current. His works can be found in collections and museums around the world, from Tate Modern to the Centre Pompidou. His signs and colors are easily recognizable: a stylistic signature that, with continuity, coherence, vitality and poetry, runs through all his works.

Practical information

Hours:

Tuesday through Sunday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Ticket:

full price - 13 euros.

reduced Euroflora visitors - 11 euros

Painting the invisible: Genoa, Giorgio Griffa on display at Palazzo Ducale

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