Tano Festa

Born in Rome on 2 November 1938. In 1957 he graduated from the Art Institute in the artistic photography section. In 1959 he exhibited for the first time, with Franco Angeli and Giuseppe Uncini, at the Galleria La Salita in Rome where, in 1961, he also held his first solo exhibition. His initial pictorial production moves within the monochrome geometric representation, on paper on canvas, which takes on ever greater expressive power: in fact Festa is interested in re-elaborating objects, extrapolated from their everyday life, and therefore perceived in their essence: shutters, doors, windows, wardrobes and mirrors which no longer perform their function as objects but, as paintings, are painting. In 1963, Plinio De Martiis’s Galleria La Tartaruga moved to Piazza del Popolo and organized the exhibition 13 artists in Rome: those same artists who gave life to the so-called “Piazza del Popolo School”. As a “popular” artist (this is how he defined his activity in those years), Festa now directs his research towards the analysis of the Italian artistic tradition of the Renaissance, citing Michelangelo. In the mid-1960s he worked on large panels where, following the photographic technique, excerpts from the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel and the Medici Tombs appear, created with enamel paint on emulsified canvas. In 1966 he was invited to an important exhibition in Milan, dedicated to the fiftieth anniversary of Dadaism. Here he met artists such as Arp and Man Ray. He transformed his painted objects into painting objects, and continued to work on photography. During the 1970s it was almost forgotten by critics and gallery owners, although it was always present in important artistic events. In the 1980s, after a long period of isolation, he managed to find new creative impulses. He creates the Coriandoli series, enormous canvases where colorful paper fragments are thrown onto rich layers of pictorial material. He also rediscovers a new figuration, expressed in the sign and in the hard and sharp gesture. His work is linked, in recent years, to the expressionism, reread and adapted to his personality, of artists such as Münch, Ensor, Matisse, Bacon. Critics, attracted by this renewed creativity, took a new interest in his work. In 1980 he was invited to the XL Venice Biennale, and in 1982 he was present at the exhibition Contemporary Italian Artists 1950-1983, in the same city. There are several personal exhibitions that have been set up in recent years. After a long illness, Tano Festa died in Rome on 9 January 1988.