MASSIMODECARLO is pleased to present Giorgio Griffa's first solo exhibition in Asia.
October 16, 2026 – January 10, 2027
In Griffa's painting, no cycle ever truly comes to an end. Each has a starting date but no conclusion. The cycles coexist, intersect and respond to one another, free from any idea of linear progression. Even the Segni primari, with which the artist brought painting back to its most essential elements at the end of the 1960s, remain open to this day.
With the Segni primari, Griffa abandons figuration, frees the canvas from the stretcher and begins painting directly on the floor, using diluted acrylics that soak into the unprimed canvas. In Due segni (1978), Tre segni (1979) and Verticale (1978), a few strokes of colour come to rest on the surface with the patience of a repeated gesture. The artist does not impose a form: he places his hand at the service of colour. He then fixes the work to the wall along its upper edge and lets it hang freely. The creases remain visible, holding the memory of the time the canvas spent folded, stored and unfolded again.
Colour no longer traces only a line, but inhabits a region of the surface, leaving the rest to silence. In Campo giallo (1983) and Campo rosso (1986), the signs settle into layers that are read from top to bottom, like a narrative of gestures and different tones. In the 1990s, Griffa begins the cycle Tre linee con arabesco, represented in the exhibition by Tre linee con arabesco n. 6 (1991): here the curve slips in among the straight lines, and each work carries a progressive number marking its place within the cycle.
Forty years on, the field reappears in the canvases Griffa is working on today. In the two Campo blu works of 2026, pale blue spreads across dark linen in irregular shapes, crossed by lines that ripple like water. The relationship between sign and space is unchanged, but it is now charged with a new restlessness, akin to Disordine, the artist's most recent cycle. There, order breaks down not to vanish but to generate new equilibria, in a continuous motion that Griffa sees as inherent in the very nature of the universe.