MASSIMODECARLO presents Canone aureo 398, a series of etchings by the Italian master Giorgio Griffa in a limited edition of 50, each signed and numbered by the artist.
The golden ratio - ancient measure of beauty, balance, and harmony - was first defined as a number by Euclid in fourth-century BC Greece. For Griffa, this irrational, infinite figure carries an extraordinary weight, both intellectual and symbolic: it is a metaphor for the myth of Orpheus. Just as Orpheus descends into the underworld to reclaim Eurydice - his feminine, creative self - the golden ratio slips beyond the grasp of reason and into the unknown.
Ph Marko Seifert. Courtesy Fondazione Giorgio Griffa.
Since the early 2000s, Griffa has pursued this idea of the unknown through the endless decimal sequence of the golden ratio, 1.6180339887… - digits that go on forever without ever being complete, yet remain constant across all of space and time. This is the territory of his Canone Aureo cycle.
As Griffa himself has noted: "The cycle of the golden ratio - or divine proportion - grew from an awareness that humanity has entrusted to this number a deep memory of the unknown, the infinite, the unsayable. One step beyond mere arithmetic, just as painting is one step beyond drawing an apple." [Giorgio Griffa, Canone aureo, MACRO, 2011]
In this etching, as in all the works of the cycle, the golden ratio appears truncated mid-sequence - alongside the marks, lines, fields, and notches that have been the signature of Griffa's work from the very beginning.
Ph Marko Seifert. Courtesy Fondazione Giorgio Griffa.
Ph Marko Seifert. Courtesy Fondazione Giorgio Griffa.
The Artist
Giorgio Griffa was born in Turin in 1936 where he still lives and works. He is an Italian painter, from the 60s-70s one of the main international exponents of contemporary pictorial research. Although his work has been associated with Arte Povera, Pittura Analitica and Minimalism, Griffa's path, while rich in exchanges and friendships, remains mostly solitary and unclassifiable in a specific current.
He starts the exhibition activity in 1968. He collaborates with Gian Enzo Sperone until he moves his gallery to Rome. Later he collaborated with other galleries including Sonnabend in New York and Paris, Martano, Salzano, Biasutti in Turin, Toselli, Ariete, Templon, Lorenzelli, Milione, Guastalla in Milan, Samangallery in Genoa, Godel, Primo Piano, Malborough, E.Tre , Mara Coccia, Oddi Baglioni, Lorcan O'Neill in Rome, Casey Kaplan in New York, Xavier Hufkens in Bruxelles and MASSIMODECARLO in Milan