(Rome 1938–1987)
Specchio, 1962/1963, signed and dated on the reverse Festa 61, enamel and varnish on wood panel and gold frame, 88.5 x 80.5 cm, (MCC)

Photo certificate:
Archivio delle opere di Tano Festa, curated by Anita Festa, archive no. A1262/60
Archivio Studio Solgio, Roma

Provenance:
Galleria La Tartaruga, Plinio de Martiis, Rome
Private Collection, Italy

The Artist’s destiny is to himself become an observer of his own formalised obsession. This makes Festa a truly European artist, an artist imbued with cultural memory, who understands the in and out journey of culture and styles. His starting point is a visionary élan that harks back to symbolism and metaphysics, subsequently merging his painterly style with the expressive results of American art from Barnett Neumann to Kelly, characterised by smooth, compact surfaces and colours that are deprived of any psychological depth and yet are full of spirituality (...)

For anyone who, like Festa, celebrates the greatness of life, everyday objects are a cause of nuisance, suspicion, and apprehension (...)
Tano Festa captures the persistent uneasiness of everyday objects, incorporating them into the art field by lifting them radically instead of manipulating different, malleable materials.
Doors, windows, shutters, wardrobes, mirrors, pianos, and obelisks become the objects of an artistic operation that incorporates them through the procedure of the still life.

Achille Bonito Oliva, from the catalogue of Tano Festa’s exhibition, ex Stabilimento Peroni, Rome, 1988


Tano Festa, letter to Arturo Schwarz, 1966

From the beginning of 1962 until the last months of 1963 I built doors, windows, shutters, wardrobes, mirrors, pianos and obelisks that look exactly like the one standing in Piazza del Popolo in Rome. For two years, I expressed myself by means of objects, using painting only to colour them, just like any cabinetmaker would do.
At the beginning of 1962, while walking on Via Due Macelli, through a bookshop window I caught sight of a reproduction of Van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Portrait.
When I looked closely at the painting, I had the impression that its real protagonist was the chandelier: perfectly motionless, as if nothing whatsoever, not even a strong wind, could make it swing. This chandelier hangs over the Arnolfini couple as if measuring the duration, and hence the limits, of their existence.
With melancholy, I mulled over the fact the Arnolfinis would disappear long before the chandelier, that they would be the first to leave that scene, whereas the objects would still remain in their place for a long time as mute, dispassionate witnesses to human existence. This intuition of the survival of the object, of the possibility that it could become a protagonist, fascinated me.
I had for a long time observed objects of household furniture that, being mostly private, are those with which we are in contact the most and with which we share the most intimate, secret moments and gestures of our existence.
Initially, this interest was merely formal, yet later on I developed a psychological, emotional attachment to them. In those months, I was asthmatic and suffered from insomnia as a result; since I was “afraid of the dark“, I tended to leave the shutters ajar instead of closing them completely, in order to allow the light of the street lamps to enter the room through the window. During those moments, all the objects in the room acquired an unusual value, different from their normal, everyday one. So I thought of reconstructing objects that are deprived of their functions, objects the materiality of which expresses a mild discomfort in relation to their given, all-too-easy presence, a sense of ambiguity and impotence in relation to their physical, inorganic, obtuse existence, and a sense of mystery and impenetrability in their cold, dark, geometrical features.
Objects of furniture, such as mirrors and wardrobes, and objects linked to social relations or the refusal thereof, such as doors, windows and shutters. Were I to paint them, those objects would acquire a form that is not that of reality, but that bestowed upon them by painting and style, they would acquire the characteristics of my own taste, actions and ability. Likewise, in Van Eyck’s painting, precisely because it is painted, the object ¬¬– the chandelier – becomes the protagonist only in relation to the idea of its hypothetical duration, but it is the painting as a whole, and especially the presence of human figures, that conveys this idea.
Were I to use objects I found (old doors, windows, etc.), they would still, despite the loss of their function, preserve the sense of their use, a specific story and a personal, private wear – and these are all features that would not allow (not me, at least) to intervene further and intentionalise them in a way different from the indication given by the object itself.
That is why my shutters, doors as well as all other objects are completely useless, for they are built in such a way that they will never work. One of my doors is impossible to open, even if it is a real door, because it has neither hinges nor handles, and it will always remain hermetically closed.
My piano has wooden keys that cannot move, the mirrors in my wardrobes do not reflect images, the wardrobes themselves do not contain anything and no light comes through my windows.
All these objects are reconstructed as we perceive them when we contemplate them, not when we use them; they are mere appearances, faux objects. And precisely their faux nature is able to give expression to the way I perceived them.
… Now, in the dark, I can see the door, look at the wardrobe in front of me, the missing panel of which offers a glimpse of a white stain that will once again become a shirt in daylight. I look at the closed door again, and I have the impression that, in that very moment, behind it there are neither the corridor nor the rest of the house; that, were I to open it then, I would only see a vast blue sky full of white.

Photo certificate:
Archivio delle opere di Tano Festa, curated by Anita Festa, archive no. A1262/60

Provenance:
Galleria La Tartaruga, Plinio de Martiis, Rome
Private Collection, Italy

The Artist’s destiny is to himself become an observer of his own formalised obsession. This makes Festa a truly European artist, an artist imbued with cultural memory, who understands the in and out journey of culture and styles. His starting point is a visionary élan that harks back to symbolism and metaphysics, subsequently merging his painterly style with the expressive results of American art from Barnett Neumann to Kelly, characterised by smooth, compact surfaces and colours that are deprived of any psychological depth and yet are full of spirituality (...)

For anyone who, like Festa, celebrates the greatness of life, everyday objects are a cause of nuisance, suspicion, and apprehension (...)
Tano Festa captures the persistent uneasiness of everyday objects, incorporating them into the art field by lifting them radically instead of manipulating different, malleable materials.
Doors, windows, shutters, wardrobes, mirrors, pianos, and obelisks become the objects of an artistic operation that incorporates them through the procedure of the still life.

Achille Bonito Oliva, from the catalogue of Tano Festa’s exhibition, ex Stabilimento Peroni, Rome, 1988


Tano Festa, letter to Arturo Schwarz, 1966

From the beginning of 1962 until the last months of 1963 I built doors, windows, shutters, wardrobes, mirrors, pianos and obelisks that look exactly like the one standing in Piazza del Popolo in Rome. For two years, I expressed myself by means of objects, using painting only to colour them, just like any cabinetmaker would do.
Tano Festa, letter to Arturo Schwarz, 1966

From the beginning of 1962 until the last months of 1963 I built doors, windows, shutters, wardrobes, mirrors, pianos and obelisks that look exactly like the one standing in Piazza del Popolo in Rome. For two years, I expressed myself by means of objects, using painting only to colour them, just like any cabinetmaker would do.
At the beginning of 1962, while walking on Via Due Macelli, through a bookshop window I caught sight of a reproduction of Van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Portrait.
When I looked closely at the painting, I had the impression that its real protagonist was the chandelier: perfectly motionless, as if nothing whatsoever, not even a strong wind, could make it swing. This chandelier hangs over the Arnolfini couple as if measuring the duration, and hence the limits, of their existence.
With melancholy, I mulled over the fact the Arnolfinis would disappear long before the chandelier, that they would be the first to leave that scene, whereas the objects would still remain in their place for a long time as mute, dispassionate witnesses to human existence. This intuition of the survival of the object, of the possibility that it could become a protagonist, fascinated me.
I had for a long time observed objects of household furniture that, being mostly private, are those with which we are in contact the most and with which we share the most intimate, secret moments and gestures of our existence.
Initially, this interest was merely formal, yet later on I developed a psychological, emotional attachment to them. In those months, I was asthmatic and suffered from insomnia as a result; since I was “afraid of the dark“, I tended to leave the shutters ajar instead of closing them completely, in order to allow the light of the street lamps to enter the room through the window. During those moments, all the objects in the room acquired an unusual value, different from their normal, everyday one. So I thought of reconstructing objects that are deprived of their functions, objects the materiality of which expresses a mild discomfort in relation to their given, all-too-easy presence, a sense of ambiguity and impotence in relation to their physical, inorganic, obtuse existence, and a sense of mystery and impenetrability in their cold, dark, geometrical features.
Objects of furniture, such as mirrors and wardrobes, and objects linked to social relations or the refusal thereof, such as doors, windows and shutters. Were I to paint them, those objects would acquire a form that is not that of reality, but that bestowed upon them by painting and style, they would acquire the characteristics of my own taste, actions and ability. Likewise, in Van Eyck’s painting, precisely because it is painted, the object ¬¬– the chandelier – becomes the protagonist only in relation to the idea of its hypothetical duration, but it is the painting as a whole, and especially the presence of human figures, that conveys this idea.
Were I to use objects I found (old doors, windows, etc.), they would still, despite the loss of their function, preserve the sense of their use, a specific story and a personal, private wear – and these are all features that would not allow (not me, at least) to intervene further and intentionalise them in a way different from the indication given by the object itself.
That is why my shutters, doors as well as all other objects are completely useless, for they are built in such a way that they will never work. One of my doors is impossible to open, even if it is a real door, because it has neither hinges nor handles, and it will always remain hermetically closed.
My piano has wooden keys that cannot move, the mirrors in my wardrobes do not reflect images, the wardrobes themselves do not contain anything and no light comes through my windows.
All these objects are reconstructed as we perceive them when we contemplate them, not when we use them; they are mere appearances, faux objects. And precisely their faux nature is able to give expression to the way I perceived them.
… Now, in the dark, I can see the door, look at the wardrobe in front of me, the missing panel of which offers a glimpse of a white stain that will once again become a shirt in daylight. I look at the closed door again, and I have the impression that, in that very moment, behind it there are neither the corridor nor the rest of the house; that, were I to open it then, I would only see a vast blue sky full of white.