Tano Festa was born in Rome, Italy, in 1938.
He attended the Art Institute of Rome and graduated in photography in 1957. Festa trained on the example of Cy Twombly and of gestural and informal painting.
His works have been first shown in 1959 in a collective exhibition at the gallery La Salita in Rome, together with the works of Franco Angeli and Giuseppe Uncini. At the same Gallery Festa’s first solo show took place in 1961.
A protagonist of the Roman Pop art school, the artist formally accepted new dada solutions, working with isolated monochrome items of everyday use. The shutters, the mirrors and the windows are famous, which became the support of his work as a painter (Persiana, 1963, F. Mauri collection). Since 1963, Festa has also focused on the masters of the Italian Renaissance, in particular Michelangelo, interpreting his subjects as advertising images ("From Michelangelo I", 1966, private collection) ("From Original Sin 2", 1966, private collection). In 1965, Tano Festa was invited to participate in the Quadriennale of Rome.
After a difficult period of poor creativity and lack of recognition by critics, in 1980, the artist was invited to the Venice Biennale. During the last years of his lightining fast existence, from the Roman suburbs, the shacks and the taverns, Festa conceived his geometric-conceptual works "The light of Egypt".
Tano Festa died in 1988 in Rome after a long illness.
