Paris keeps being, in Europe, the large centre of arts where every year are presented hundred of exhibitions of many hundred artists from ali over the worid.

       Living here for more than thirty years every Portuguese thing interests me, and particularly anything connected with Portuguese culture. Só, three years ago l visited an exhibition of a Portuguese painter from Fafe — Pompeu.

      l liked very much this exhibition and was surprised with a set of photographies of large size paintings which Pompeu hás shown me and later on were shown here in Paris.

      Besides their excellent composition and colour the paintings showed Paris something new - the history, the culture and the surprising truth of a people from a Northern viliage — the painter's own. This cosmopolitan milieu of Paris likes and accepts anything different, original and solidiy built.

       This is the reason why Pompeu hás left here só many friends and fans

whom sincerely l belong to.

Paris, June 1988

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