In the sixties, Griffa began working as an assistant to the Italian painter Filippo Scroppo, a member of the MAC (Art Concreta) movement and a teacher at the Accademia Albertina in Turin.
Painting with acrylic on raw un-stretched canvas, burlap and linen, Griffa's works are nailed directly to the wall along their top edge.
In keeping with his idea that painting is "constant and never finished", many of his works display a deliberate end-point that has been described as "stopping a thought midsentence.
In 2012, Giorgio Griffa had a solo exhibition, Fragments 1968 – 2012 at Casey Kaplan gallery in New York, leading him to be named one of the "10 thrilling rediscoveries from 2012.
Recent solo presentations of Giorgio Griffa's works include Uno and Due, Galleria Civica d'Art Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin (2002), Neuer Kunstverein, Aschaffenburg (2005), MACRO, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome (2011), Golden Ratio, Mies van der Rohe Haus, Berlin (2013) Fragments 1968 – 2012, Casey Kaplan, New York (2013) and Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève (2015).