(Rome 1938–1987)
Rosso n. 12 – Rosso Segnale n. 11, 1960, dated, titled and signed Settembre 60 / Tano festa on the reverse, mixed media and collage on canvas, 80 x 120 cm, framed

Photo certificate:
Archivio Tano Festa, Rome, signed by Francesco Soligo, archive no. 60812/H152

Provenance:
Luigi Ghirlandi Collection, Bologna
Christie’s Milan, 28 November 2000
Porro & C., Milan, 16 November 2010
European Private Collection

What did you do before 1960? “I was interested in American painting, which one could see in Rome in those years – Matta, Gorky, De Kooning and especially Rothko, whose works were exhibited at the Tartaruga gallery in 1959, along with Scarpitta and Kline.
In 1960 I started creating monochrome paintings with strips, but I was no longer thinking about the paintings of other artists; the stimulus for my works came from the things that surrounded me, the things I saw, such as the street and pedestrian crossings, the environment and the objects.
Subsequently I partly replaced paper strips with rigid wooden strips, as is the case with these red and black paintings, but I was never interested in materials as expressive means.”
Interview with Tano Festa, Galleria La Salita, Rome, April 1967