Festa Tano

Tano Festa (Rome, 1938 – 1988) was one of the most influential exponents of Italian Pop Art and a central figure of the legendary Piazza del Popolo School . Brother of Francesco Lo Savio, he attended the Art Institute of Rome and graduated in photography in 1957, inspired by Cy Twombly and by gestural and informal painting.

A cultured and restless artist, Festa was able to lead gestural painting towards a new objectivity, reinterpreting the elements of everyday life and the masterpieces of the Renaissance through a metaphysical and contemporary lens.

Raised in a climate of extraordinary artistic fervor, Tano Festa shared the stage with the giants of his generation. A key turning point in his career was his participation in the historic exhibition "The New Realists" in New York in 1962. There, his work was exhibited alongside that of Mario Schifano , Mimmo Rotella , and Enrico Baj , establishing Italian Pop Art (or the "School of Piazza del Popolo") as the only true European alternative to the American movement.