 While virtually unknown in Bali now, the Italian artist Locatelli,
was perhaps the most successful artist of his era to visit Bali and certainly the most
expensive. Patronized by the rich and powerful in Italy, including the Pope and Mussolini,
locatelli was invited to the Dutch East Indies by no one less than the Governo General. In
Bali, he and his wife moved into Colin McPhee’s house in Sayan. With a speech
impediment, Locatelli, rarely spoke even though wherever he went, he was the guest of the
highest echelons of society. He departed Bali to Manila, with Ambron, after being warned
that their Italian citizenship would bring problems when Italy joined the Axis powers in
Europe after the invasion of Holland. There he and his wife were invited to met with
General MacArthur. They remained in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation. Many
of his paintings of Bali were destroyed in the war. He mysteriously disappeared without a
trace outside Manila, just before the American reconquest of the Philippines. |
