(Rome 1938–1987)
Da Michelangelo, n. 2, 1966, signed, titled and dated Festa 66, on the reverse, enamel on canvas, 130 x 97 cm, framed, (AR)

Photo certificate:
Archivio Tano Festa, Rome, 10 January 1997, archive no. 6613/P449

Provenance:
Galleria La Salita, Rome (label on the reverse)
Private Collection Italy
Christie’s, Milan, 25 November 1996, lot 270
Galleria Granelli, Livorno
European Private Collection

Exhibited:
Rome, Ex Stabilimento Peroni, Tano Festa, 12 March – 24 April 1988, p. 72, no. 38 with ill.;
Livorno, Galleria Granelli, Tano Festa, 30 November 1997 – 8 January 1998, illustrated in the exhibition catalogue

“The majestic, sculptural sadness of Michelangelo reverberates fittingly in Tano’s soul”
(Maurizio Calvesi)

It was at the Venice Biennale of 1964 that the European and Italian public first became aware of the Anglo-American phenomenon of Pop Art. The American artist Rauschenberg was rewarded at that time and the Padiglione Italia hosted works by artists such as Mimmo Rotella, Franco Angeli, Tano Festa, Giosetta Fioroni, Concetto Pozzati e Mario Schifano.
In fact, in the 1960s these artists, who met at the Caffè Rosati in Piazza del Popolo or at Plinio De Martis’s Tartaruga Gallery, brought to life the so-called Piazza del Popolo School, of which Tano Festa was one of the most important representatives.
It was indeed at the famous 1964 Venice Biennale that Festa exhibited his work La creazione dell’uomo (The Creation of Man) alongside one of his Persiane (Shutters). This first work was the outcome of his new research based on iconographic elements of the past, in particular from the Sistine Chapel and from Michelangelo’s Medici Tombs.
From these works by Tano Festa it is easy to observe that Italian Pop Art, in contrast to its English or American incarnation, has its own unique characteristics and did not merely consist of a discussion of society, culture and aesthetic values. Some of its unique features include an unbreakable link with high culture, with art, and its characteristic history is undoubtedly present in Festa’s work.
If someone like Schifano, for example, concentrates predominantly on new images from an urban context and, fascinated by the American myth, appropriates its symbols (one need only think of his images of Coca-Cola or Esso), Festa, on the other hand, turns his gaze to ‘his’ Italy. With an attitude that is more ‘nationalistic’, he prefers instead to use an iconography that is further removed from the consumerism of American Pop Art and more imbued with Italian memory, history and culture. “An American paints Coca Cola as something of value, but for me – Tano Festa says of the subject – Michelangelo is the same thing. In the sense that we are in a country where, instead of eating pre-packaged food, we eat chocolates imprinted with the Mona Lisa”.
(From the catalogue of the exhibition at the Galleria La Salita, 1967)
For Festa, history is not something that is distinct from or interchangeable with the present; rather, it is a continuous presence. Because of this he cannot rid himself of his artistic forebears, but rather makes them the object of his works. And thus Michelangelo’s faces, treated with a great freedom by the artist, live again on his canvases in a new dimension, ethereal and faintly surreal.