ORLANDO POMPEU


	A few days before my 50^th birthday, I wished to write this in order to describe my artistic course and to explain why I hold the pictorial course. In 1976, I enrolled for a painting and sculpture course in the Alvarez Academy in Porto city. Twice a week, I took the train to Porto to have classes. During months, between Trindade Railway station and Alegria Street I dreamt with the perspective, the light, the colour, the technique, the success and the consecration. In 1978, I went to Paris. I painted in the Montemartre streets and I established an atelier in Place du Thetre by Sacre- -Coeur, there, I painted coal and red graphite portraits of tourists. Therefore, I got the necessary francs to survive in a simple and lacking way in the City of Light. During several years, I came back to Paris. In 1986, Jean Camion invited me by to expose in his gallery, in the Beaux-Arts Street, in front of the Art School in Paris. The exhibition was a success. For the first time, the French people saw oil paintings made with forks; it’s what we call “peinturefourchetes”. Many of the Art School students visited the exhibition and they were fascinated and astonished… There so, they took from me 37 forks with which I hade made a sculpture that I put in the centre of the gallery. I spent all my savings. Blessed is the irreverence of the young people… It was a fertile exhibition of events and joys. José Gervásio Leite, consul of Portugal in Paris, visited me. Moreover, so did José Augusto França, Manuel Cargaleiro, Amândio Martins and Abílio Pimenta, who was in Genève and came to Paris to see my exhibition. Jean Camion introduced me to his French friends. In Lipp, I met François Mitterrand — a great gentlemen very human who saluted me with his kind esteem. I convinced myself that I was one of the best painters in the world and that I had conquered Paris. With my full of money pockets, I bought some slips, mine were too much old and dirty and I came back to Portugal, to my village. Next year I came back to Paris to expose in the Portuguese Cultural Centre of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation my hyper-realistic paintings: the big pillars and the “dorsal column” of all my pictorial work. Big dimension amazing paintings made with a technique, chromatic, anatomic and illuminist precision. It was a praise hymn to the gentle and simple people of my village… It was my PhD thesis, my master in plastic arts. In the vernissage were present José Augusto França, Georges Gulbenkian, Teresa Mendes, Cargaleiro, Shan Lima, Bertino, Daniel Lacerda, Costa Camelo, Egídio Álvaro and many other friends that I will never forget… In the next years, I exposed in Paris with beautiful vernissages and many guests, moreover the presence of the Portugal Ambassadors - Dr. Gaspar da Silva, Dr. Sherman de Macedo; Dr. António Monteiro and my friends Lino Lagoa and Abílio Pimenta who went to Paris on purpose… I exposed in 1991, in the Caixa Geral de Depósitos; in 1996 in the Império/ Assurance; again in 2000, in the Caixa Geral de Depósitos; in 2002, in the Banco Comercial Português, where new readers join my cause. There so, the international artistic universe doors opened… In 1990, I went to the United States of America. After three months of hard work by painting and drawing, submitting myself to long schedule that just a few would support, I exposed, in June, individually, in the Eighty Four Gallery, in New York. Its director, Joe Bascon, admired me a lot. He used to say that he had never saw a creative and methodical painter such as I. The Portugal Ambassador in the Unesco – Dr.Fernando Reino an the Portugal consul – Dr. Quintela Paixão, received me with great friendship… The exhibition was a success… America welcomed me in its heart, supporting my self-esteem. In 1994 April, I arrived the Narita Airport in Japan. During four months, I lived and painted in Tokyo. I exposed in TIAS – Tokyo International Art Show and in the Garou Monogatari Gallery. José e Manuela Alvarez received me in the Portuguese Cultural Centre, in Tokyo. They treated me as their son and they were crucial to my “orient dream” become real. The Portugal Ambassador – Dr. João Salgueiro invited me to have dinner at his house; treating me as a prince. By seeing that the Japanese youth adored my painting, I felt that the effort I made, was rewarded. I felt that the future would give me an election place and grateful memories too… In 1997, twenty years later, after being during a short time in London, I came back to Barcelona. I shared my time among Figueras, Cadaquês and Port Lighat. I went through Dali’s Universe. I painted in his sceneries and next to his house that I visited for three times. There I travelled several times by boat to Cabo Creus… I felt the joy of living, in a lasting condition of dazzle, in a surrealist universe. Three months later, I exposed in the Marabelló Gallery in front of the Ritz Hotel. In the vernissage I bonded friends such as: Joan Abelló, Maria Dei Mar, Pierre Llobet, Pedro Aires Abreu, Jaqueline Cheneu and Xavier Cot. It is a fact that I had the enough determination to make paintings that I consider real passion and creativity icons: statements, life origins, I suffer, I grind and drink keeping the pain silent. Green Minho, motherland, my silences, R- from revolt, creativity lovers, travels to the centre of harmony, the century diseases , “un jour dans la plage”, in Pompeu gardens, the painter’s dreams, travel to the essence of poetry, metamorphosis of the essence, senses origins, “pompeuana” metaphor, the farce, in-determinated present. I am the painter, the Broadway night, essence and creativity, time of freedom, precocious diagnosis of sexual pathology, “L’age d’Or”, and many other works of this and the gesture thematic core… It is a fact that is a privilege to be represented by Galeria D’Arte 46 and it means a lot to me to expose, this time, in Ordem dos Médicos in Porto. In this Cathedral, where is written the name of renowned doctors who sacrificed their personal and familiar lives in order to proportionate us the greatest wellbeing that the human being can have – the health… Twenty-eight years later, I still believe that I created a personal pictorial style, Pompeuano, heterogeneous, creative, original and contemporary. I believe that my DNA and my chromosomes have a specific composition that stimulates my artistic sensitivity… I believe that I should contemplate even more the butterflies elegance, the birds chirping, the leaves of the trees and the poems of the freedom that the seagulls tee us… Today, 50 years later, I still paint passionately… Cepães, April of 2006 Orlando Pompeu

	Tradução: Dra. Sónia Teixeira