Torin, 9 Apr. (askanews) – An exhibition that celebrates the 90 years of Giorgio Griffa through the re-presentation of a moment, the summer of 1969, when with the meeting with the gallery owner Gian Enzo Sperone and the photographer Paolo Mussat Sartor the artist in a certain sense becomes himself, recognizes himself through the external gaze and establishes a stronger relationship with the world. The Giorgio Griffa Foundation presents the “Summer 69” exhibition in Turin.
“It is in some way a reflection on the past and the present – the artist told askanews – and they were works in which I was looking, and I realized this later, because awareness is acquired after, first you only intuit, you feel something, I tried to establish the identity of the signs for themselves rather than of the signs as an indication of a different identity. It was the identity of the signs that interested me.”
In Griffa’s work, which lives on a poetic lightness that remains of great charm and which lucidly investigates painting, as an art that comes from the millennia of humanity, the sign is a decisive element, it is the basis of every discussion on expressive possibilities. A sign, his, which despite its formal essentiality today proves to be precious at a time when digital is slowly making things and their soul disappear. “I don’t know what the sign will be in the future and I don’t know how to predict – added Griffa -. I think what we can do in this moment of great change is to try to accumulate as many roots and memories as possible, to see if they can then be transferred”.
The Turin exhibition, in a space that admirably exploits natural light, is also a celebration, a birthdayand we asked Giorgio Griffa, in light of all the time that has passed, how he looks at his painting today. “As far as I’m concerned – he replied – I try to continue following a line of thought: I have these very latest works which in some way are linked to the previous cycles, but they are absolutely new and I am very happy to see that the color treated in this way reminds me of the light of the painting on the wall, of the frescoes of the Middle Ages, even more than that of the Renaissance”.
The dialogue with the past is constant, but it is a dialogue that aims to lead the artist to continue saying new things. Perhaps Griffa’s most important lesson, at a time when he boasts of having no memory, could be this.
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