About

Tano Festa was born in Rome on November 2, 1938.
Brother of Francesco Lo Savio, he attended the Institute of Art in Rome and graduated in the course of Art Photography in 1957. He trained on the example of C. Twombly and gestural and informal painting. It will not be long from this date that already in 1960 he is grappling with his first exhibition, a group show at the Salita di Liverani in Rome. In those years the meetings had already taken place: Festa had been a friend of Franco Angeli since the late 1950s, while Francesco Lo Savio was a friend of Mario Schifano.
Fundamental to his career is the participation with Schifano, Baj and Rotella in the exhibition entitled “The New Realism” in New York invited by Sidney Janis.In that same year, in 1960 the Odyssia Gallery organized an exhibition of the “new generation in Italy” in New York with Francesco Arcangeli, Valsecchi and Argan. Among the many artists present in that American exhibition we find: Bendini, Dorazio, Guerreschi, Perilli, Pomodoro, Scanavino and others.Just a couple of years earlier (1958) Milan had hosted “the new American painting” at the Pavilion of Contemporary Art.These were the beginnings of “effervescent” years, years in which Rome seemed to be the city that, better than the others, knew how to interact with the new international artistic inspiration, especially with the USA.

Before obtaining this name, the so-called “Scuola di Piazza del Popolo” had to wait until 1963, the year in which the Galleria La Tartaruga moved to the aforesaid square, becoming the center of the Roman effervescence.On that occasion, the gallery owner Plinio De Martiis organized an exhibition which he saw lined up on the walls of the new exhibition space: Angeli, Bignardi, Festa, Fioroni, Kounellis, Mambor, Mauri, Novelli, Perilli, Rotella, Saul, Tacchi and Twombly; the title of the exhibition was “13 artists in Rome”.

Among the students of the school in Piazza del Popolo he was certainly the most passionate and simple in his ways. Festa’s painting has always been charged with an expressive force contaminated by the need to perceive the object of everyday life as the founding basis of what art to come: here are shutters, doors, windows, wardrobes and mirrors that no longer perform their function as objects but, as paintings, become paintings. As a popular artist, (as he defined his activity in those years), he rightfully supports the possibility, all Italian, of being able to express Pop culture by doing without soups or actresses but highlighting the priceless artistic beauties that history he guarded. Hence the interest in the analysis of the Italian artistic tradition of the Renaissance, extrapolating and quoting from the work of Michelangelo. In fact, in the mid-1960s he worked on large panels where, following the photographic technique, isolated excerpts from the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel and from the Medici tombs made with enamel paint on emulsified canvas appear. In 1966 he came into contact in Milan with artists such as Arp and Man Ray. Festa transforms his painted objects into object painting and continues to work on photography.

Then came the 70s, the most difficult of his immense artistic career: although he was always present at the most important events, critics and gallery owners preferred artists who were able to better communicate their image.