Painter, draughtsman and teacher, born in Port Talbot, Glamorgan the son of Italian immigrant parents. Regarded as a child prodigy he initially studied at Accademia Brera, Milan. Vicari then honed his abilities at the Slade School of Fine Art, 1949-51, under William Coldstream and Lucian Freud.
He held his first solo exhibition at the Obelisk Gallery in 1956. He also showed at the Redfern Gallery, and at other important venues in London, Paris, New York and Nice. After an exhibition at the Galerie Vendôme, Beirut, in 1975, the Saudi Arabian government commissioned 60 oil paintings for the King Faisal Conference Centre in Riyadh. An acknowledged portrait painter, his subjects have included Princess Caroline of Monaco, her father Prince Rainier, Sophia Loren, Mao Tse-tung, Vladimir Putin and a plethora of Arab royalty.
In 1995 he was the first Western artist to exhibit in Beijing, China. There are three museums in Saudi Arabia devoted solely to his work and in a 2013 published list of the world’s richest artists he was at No 3, below Damien Hirst and Jasper Johns, but above Jeff Koons which no doubt pleased him as he was undoubted a brilliant self-publicist whose alleged worth was estimated at more than £90 million. His work is in the collections of the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, NLW, NMW, Oriel Mon and Oriel Mostyn Gallery.