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Rome (1938-1988) Among the boys at the school in Piazza del Popolo he was certainly the most passionate and simple in his ways. He frequented the Rosati café together with Schifano, Angeli and Giosetta Fioroni. And he too was at home at the La Tartaruga gallery. A movement, that of the Piazza del Popolo School, to which over time Mambor, Kounellis, Lo Savio (brother of Tano Festa), Tacchi and Bignardi also approached. Tano Festa's first exhibition dates back to 1959, together with Franco Angeli and Giuseppe Uncini, at the Galleria La Salita in Rome where, in 1961, he held his first solo exhibition. Festa's painting has always been full of an expressive force contaminated by the need to perceive the everyday object as the founding basis of what will be the art to come: hence shutters, doors, windows, wardrobes and mirrors that no longer perform their function as objects but, as paintings, they become painting. As a popular artist (as he defined his activity in those years), he rightly supports the entirely Italian possibility of being able to express Pop culture 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 Michelangelo's work. In fact, in the mid-1960s he worked on large panels where, following the photographic technique, isolated excerpts from the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel and the Medici tombs appear, created with enamel paint on emulsified canvas. In 1966 he came into contact with artists such as Arp and Man Ray in Milan. Festa transformed his painted objects into object paintings and continued 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. In the 80s he found new creative impulses and created the series dedicated to Confetti, enormous festive canvases rich in pictorial material. Furthermore, he rediscovers a new figuration expressed in the sign and in the hard and sharp gesture. Festa's new work is linked, in recent years, to the expressionism, reread and adapted to his will, of artists such as Munch, Ensor, Bacon and Matisse. But in Festa there is also solitude and emptiness. Critics, attracted by this renewed creativity, took a new interest in his work. In fact, in 1980 he participated in the XL Venice Biennale and in 1982 he was present at the exhibition Contemporary Italian Artists 1950-1983 and there were several personal exhibitions that were set up. In 1989 he created the monumental "Window on the sea", visible on the seafront of Villa Margi, between Palermo and Messina, dedicated to his brother Francesco Lo Savio, who died very young in 1963.
