Provenance: Private Collection, Paris

ABOUT THE WORK

          Macario Vitalis was a Filipino-French painter of visionary paintings influenced by French Post-Impressionism.
          Just a year after his release from the German camp in 1944 – wherein he painted and  drew daily scenes in the camp, a fine extant example is the An American Shoeshine.  Vitalis returned to Puteaux and resumed his stay at Renault’s restaurant.  He met Picasso  at “Big Boy” who said upon learning that Vitalis was Filipino, “Juan Luna is a great painter.”
          Vitalis had the opportunity to exhibit along with Nena Saguil and Ofelia Gelvezon-Tequi were at the Six Artistes Contemporains Philippins en Europe at the Academie Diplomatique  Internationale in Paris.  He was honored with the medal of excellence from the Institut Academique de Paris and was chosen as the subject of a retrospective at the CCP Main Gallery in 1986, where works from as far back as 1936 were shown.