In addition, Canepa's art reflected his paternal Genovese family's seafaring history and his father's extravagant construction of a small opera theater in San Pedro de Macorís, the Teatro Colón.

He exhibited in the Bonestell and ACA galleries, and his early circle of friends, with whom he exchanged paintings and drawings, included the painters David Burliuk, Pavel Tchelitchew, Walter Houmère, Rufino Tamayo and Mario Carreño and (later) Edward Laning.

His earliest recognition in the Dominican Republic came from Rafael Díaz Niese, on the occasion of a show of self-portraits in 1943 at the Galería Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santo Domingo.

Díaz Niese's essay established Canepa, Darío Suro and Jaime Colson as the trinity of Dominican artists who led the second generation of high modernism (1930s and 1940s).

[7]Regarding other early works and against the background of Canepa's familiarity with Renaissance art, Díaz Niese summed up the outstanding qualities of his paintings: ... sobriety, the organizational logic of his compositions and the intense love for strongly drawn forms within an atmosphere of brightness and exquisite beauty.

"[9] Dream symbolism, the "nostalgic search for a vanished land" and the exploration of the "mysterious realm of family and childhood" are among the themes that León David identified in Canepa's work.

This renewed interest was largely triggered by one event: the efforts of a member of the Trujillo family to seize his historical triptych Enriquillo – Duarte – Luperón (1971) while still in the Santo Domingo airport.

In 2005, the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute inaugurated their archives with an extensive collection of Tito Canepa's letters, drawings and photographs,[16][17] along with three paintings: Ojeda y Caonabo (1984), The Sisters Mirabál (1985) and The Gulf of Arrows (1987).

[20] In 2018 the Smithsonian American Art Museum acquired two paintings by Tito Canepa: Nude in the Grass (Desnuda sobre la yerba) and The Jester (El disfraz).