Giorgio Griffa: Consistently Through Variation

Now on view at Casey Kaplan, Consistently Through Variation marks Giorgio Griffa’s seventh solo exhibition with the gallery. Spanning over fifty years of practice, the exhibition brings together more than twenty works from the late 1960s to the present day. In doing so, it offers a rare and focused insight into the Italian artist’s sustained investigation into the language of painting—an investigation defined not by conclusion but by the act of continuation itself.

This rhythm of appearance and pause—of repetition and difference—defines the artist’s unique formal vocabulary. Working on unprimed, unstretched—sometimes slightly unraveling—canvas and linen, Griffa applies acrylic in gestural sequences that remain deliberately unfinished. These marks—whether lines, numbers, or calligraphic signs—appear to track their own making, like a trace of thought moving across time. Often folded and hung directly on the wall, the works retain the memory of their storage, with creases forming a secondary, structural grid. For Griffa, this folding is not a blemish but a compositional tool, reminding us of the painting’s materiality and its lived history, rather than stretching and hiding it. The works on view trace key moments in the artist’s evolution—from the early Segni series, where color and gesture operate with minimal intervention, to more recent canvases incorporating numerical sequences, fragments of poetry, or quotations from quantum physics and ancient philosophy. Throughout, the constant is Griffa’s commitment to variation.

“The hand, the eye, the brain, the heart, the brush lay color onto the canvas.
They fix the identity of that mark.
The atoms of color and fabric embrace in a new life.
Endless movement, photons of light enter that mark and emerge colored.
The spaces of silence between one mark and another shape becoming, just as in music.”

Giorgio Griffa, 2025

For more information, please consult Casey Kaplan’s website here.

Installation view of "Giorgio Griffa: Consistently Through Variation" (2025) at Casey Kaplan in New York, the United States.

Giorgio Griffa, Onda Gialla, 2023. Acrylic on canvas — 27.6 x 37 in / 70 x 94 cm. Courtesy the artist and Casey Kaplan © Giorgio Griffa

Installation view of "Giorgio Griffa: Consistently Through Variation" (2025) at Casey Kaplan in New York, the United States.

Giorgio Griffa, Segni Orrizontali, 1975. Acrylic on canvas — 24 x 34 in / 61 x 87 cm. Courtesy the artist and Casey Kaplan © Giorgio Griffa

Installation view of "Giorgio Griffa: Consistently Through Variation" (2025) at Casey Kaplan in New York, the United States.

Giorgio Griffa, Tre Linee con Arabesco n. 259, 1992 Acrylic on canvas — 46.1 x 39 in / 117 x 99 cm. Courtesy the artist and Casey Kaplan © Giorgio Griffa

Installation view of "Giorgio Griffa: Consistently Through Variation" (2025) at Casey Kaplan in New York, the United States.

Giorgio Griffa, Quattro Colori, 2012. Acrylic on canvas — 58.7 x 52.8 in / 149 x 134 cm. Courtesy the artist and Casey Kaplan © Giorgio Griffa

Installation view of "Giorgio Griffa: Consistently Through Variation" (2025) at Casey Kaplan in New York, the United States.

Giorgio Griffa, Canone Aureo 135, 2015. Acrylic on canvas — 55.1 x 35.4 in / 140 x 90 cm. Courtesy the artist and Casey Kaplan © Giorgio Griffa

 

 

Last Updated on November 27, 2025