Tano Festa was born in Rome in 1938. There were two inceptions to his artistic career: the first when he was six years old and encouraged by his father to take up painting as a hobby; the second when he enrolled at the Institute of Art in Rome to study painting and photography, from which he graduated in 1957. Gestural painting had an undeniable impact on the young Festa, who cited Twombly, Matta, Tobey, de Kooning and Pollock as his influences.
The first opportunity he had to exhibit his work arose in 1959 at Galleria La Salita in Rome, as part of a group exhibition with Franco Angeli and Giuseppe Uncini. Two years later, he would hold his first solo exhibition at the same gallery. His first real break, however, came in 1962–1964, when he took part in The New Realism exhibition in New York with Mario Schifano, Enrico Baj and Mimmo Rotella, before taking part in the Venice Biennale.
Soon after emerging on the international scene, Festa was mourning the loss of his brother, Francesco Lo Savio, who took his own life in a Marseille hotel in 1963. This tragedy had a profound impact on Festa’s work, who began to paint with unprecedented violence, dipping his hands directly into the paint. His frenzy grew to a crescendo before he came to a crashing halt. Lacking drive and inspiration, Festa turned to drugs, alcohol and medication, slipping into poverty, precariousness and ignorance. Most of the seventies were lost to this era of darkness. Fortunately however, an invitation to the Venice Biennale in 1980 would reignite his creative spark and lead to his production of the Coriandoli cycle. New opportunities quickly followed, such as the Artisti Italiani 1950–1983 exhibition in 1982, supporting this new artistic impetus.
After an early period marked by geometric grey and monochrome assemblages, Festa turned from graphic research to expressive power. To do so, he gravitated towards objects from everyday life whose practical functions were subverted by the medium of painting. Doors, windows and shutters played a significant part in his work. This selection of objects is, of course, significant, as they symbolise spatial communication and the transition from one to another. By flattening them into images, Festa deprived them of their functional, if not symbolic purpose: the illusionary space of painting is still one the viewer experiences as a perceptive transition – but only through subversion. Festa’s lasting dialogue with Michelangelo was similarly layered. While appearing to turn to pop culture, the numerous references to the Italian master speak to a heritage worthy of appropriation and fresh perspectives.
Usually associated with the Roman pop art movement, Tano Festa is undeniably an artist of subversion and diversion, but perhaps not as one might expect. Italian pop art really does cleave to the notion of the ‘popular’. Whereas Americans might focus on products and brands, Italians still – sometimes even literally – consume cultural images every day. Festa used the example of chocolate bar wrappers with images of the Mona Lisa. With culture becoming increasingly industrialised and commercialised, Festa and his peers preferred to revisit the staples of Renaissance art as commercials rather than advertising images themselves.
His most notable solo and group exhibitions include: 5 pittori – Roma 60: Angeli, Festa, Lo Savio, Schifano e Uncini, Galleria La Salita, Rome (1960); Vitalità del negativo nell’arte italiana 1960/70, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (1970); Venice Biennale (1964, 1978, 1980, 1984, 1993, 1995 and 2013); The Italian Metamorphosis, 1943–1968, Guggenheim Museum, New York (1994); Minimalia: An Italian Vision in 20th Century Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1999); Italics. Arte Italiana fra Tradizione e Rivoluzione, 1968–2008, Palazzo Grassi, the François Pinault Foundation, Venice (2008) and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago (2009).