The Municipalité de Paris organised an homage to Portuguese painter Francis Smith at the end of the 1960s (Lisbon, Portugal, 1881 – Paris, France, 1961). The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (FCG) joined this homage by way of its Centre Culturel Portugais in Paris, which decided to host an exhibition of several of the painter’s works, in his memory.

The organisation and enactment of this exhibition was the responsibility of Paulo Ferreira (1911-1999), a Portuguese artist who stood out for his work as an exhibition curator, and he worked with the FCG on several occasions in this role. The initiative also received official support from the Casa de Portugal in Paris, and the association “Les Amis de Francis Smith”, set up in 1962 by painters Isis Kischka (1908-1974) and André Hambourg (1909-1999).

The goal of the exhibition was to celebrate the memory of Francis Smith, highlighting the artist’s loyalty to his origins (despite his ties with the School of Paris) and the sensitivity and profound lyricism of his works, features that made the painter “one of the most vivid symbols of the traditional friendship between Portugal and France that the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation has made its own from the outset” (Le Portugal dans l’oeuvre de Francis Smith, 1969).

The catalogue for the event was organised by Paulo Ferreira, who gathered all the documentary and bibliographic sources and also included a text by French art critic Raymond Cogniat (1896-1977), former Fine Arts Inspector of France and at the time in charge of the art section of the Le Figaro newspaper.