{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":47321,"auction_id":95,"set_id":125,"lot_number":"69","artist":"Macario Vitalis (1898 - 1990)","title":"Last Supper (La Cene)","starting_price":300000,"signed_dated":"signed (lower right and verso) dated 1962","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"13\" x 39 1/4\" (33 cm x 100 cm)","property":null,"coa":"Accompanied by a certificate issued by Comité Vitalis  confirming the authenticity of this lot","provenance":null,"exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"Macario Vitalis' encounter with Cubism began when he became acquainted with the Groupe de Puteaux (Section d'Or), proponents of Orphic Cubism that met regularly at 'Big Boy,' a theaterrestaurant owned by Camille Renault located at 60 Avenue de la République in Puteaux, France. 'Big Boy,' named after Renault's physique, was a melting pot of different artists practicing different styles. It was also there that Vitalis had settled around 1936-37, a decade after he established residency in Montmartre, the heart and soul of the arts in Paris.<br /><br />Around 1940, Vitalis would meet the Orphic Cubist Gaston Duchamp, also known as Jacques Villon, elder brother to the creative avant-garde Marcel Duchamp. During this time, Vitalis' artistic style still echoed the practice of the post-impressionists with his strong expressive sensibilities resulting from the distortion of forms and the employment of arbitrary colors.<br /><br />Villon would have a profound influence on Vitalis' art.<br /><br />But in July 1941, at the height of the Second World War, Vitalis was arrested by the Germans on grounds of his American citizenship, an unfortunate situation at that time since the Philippines was a Commonwealth of the United States. Vitalis would be imprisoned in a German camp in Compiègne, Northern France. Dispirited, Vitalis' artistic evolution was hampered, although he still painted, mainly portraits, while incarcerated.<br /><br />Vitalis would only be released from imprisonment in 1944. Feeling a renewed sense of freedom, both personally and creatively, Vitalis reunited with Villon and his friends at the Section d'Or.<br /><br /> Vitalis would now embrace his Cubist identity and cast away his Post-Impressionist skin.<br /><br />By the 1960s, Vitalis, who had now settled at Plestinles-Grèves in the Brittany region of northwestern France (he first visited it in the summer of 1946 and would regularly make sojourns until 1957 when he settled there permanently), had again developed his style from Cubism to a cubist-impressionist amalgamation. This yet another artistic evolution in Vitalis had likely been reinforced by the breathtaking views of Plestin-les-Grèves and the Brittany region in general, in which an expressive coastline marked by towering rock formations are gently caressed by the resonating waves of the North Atlantic, offering an unfathomable ocean of creative stimulation for artist-subject relations. (This is in addition to the enduring influence of Villon, who wedded Cubism and Impressionism through his use of a luminous palette.)<br /><br />La Cene belongs to this period in Vitalis' career, known as his \"Plestin Period.\" An almost purely abstract image of the iconic Last Supper, La Cene is glaringly characterized by its luminous colors (interestingly, the Last Supper is also the Fifth Luminous Mystery of the Holy Rosary). This contrasts with Cubism's—especially its analytical phase— embrace of a somber, almost monochromatic palette. This luminosity in Vitalis' work harks back to the works of the Impressionists.<br /><br />Following Villon's artistic maxim of \"reducing everything to the absolute,\" La Cene preserves the geometric fragmentation of Cubism but retains color as an integral part of the composition, enhancing the work's linear structure and the expressive interplay between its planar forms and rhythmic framework. Much like Orpheus, the deity from which Orphic Cubism got its name, the vividness of the composition shrouds the subject in lyrical mysticality, befitting its religious theme. (Adrian Maranan)","lot_group":"Painting","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":1100000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":1100000,"userBid":5926,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":1321760,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":47009,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/95/125/lot/69.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[900000,1000000,1100000,1200000,1300000,1400000,1500000,1600000,1700000,1800000,1900000,2000000,2200000,2400000,2600000,2800000,3000000,3200000,3400000,3600000,3800000,4000000,4200000,4400000,4600000,4800000,5000000,5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":68,"next":70,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}