A radiant painting

Water, sky and earth, greens, blues and shades of ochre, with some tints of rose and red from the setting Sun, these overwhelmingly predominate the current work of Orlando Pompeu. The influence is there, maybe sifted through the imagination, of the fertile, granite North and its festivals, rooted in tradition but in frank expansion. Bodies are inter-twined or surreptitiously caressing, in broad curving outlines and swirling spirals.

   Naïve dances crossed by the majestic currents of hidden desires. Birds and flowers carpet the space. Eyes are melancholy pools awaiting the shock. This abstract conformation is peculiar, impossible to place in any of the national or international dominant tendencies in plastic art. It is, however, perfectly in keeping with the ideas of an artist who wants, above ali, to imbibe the «obscure and revealing contents of (his) creative imagination», and to establish the «record of an emotive source». We are discussing a bucolic painting, here. But it is tormented and restless, expressing a great need for love. A painting of meetings, of natural human relation- ships among which a certain social irony can be discerned on one canvas or another. Fleeting reflections can be described on a surface that is flowing, undulating;

we glimpse emotions that are paradoxical, yet always pleasing, on the diurnal and lunar surfaces. Pompeu is an unruffled traveller. From Portugal to Paris and New York he always carries with him the memories of the province which witnessed his own evolution. He is attentive to the language of Nature, stirred by the subtle charm of this universe that is so individual that appears to be crystallised in a remote, glinting time. It is not merely an appearance that he is showing in what he paints; it is the essence, the fragile pulsating heart of souls that seem to yearn to endure the frenetic tumult of daily life.

Paris, February 1992

In Catálogo da Exposição «Horizonte de Liberdade» de Orlando Pompeu, na Fundação Eng. António de Almeida. Janeiro / Fevereiro de 1997