Gerson de Souza (Recife, PE, 1926 - Rio de Janeiro, RJ, 2008)
Painter, designer, recorder, carver.
Gerson Alves de Souza was a of the most important and expressive representatives of Brazilian Naif Art. Recife from Recife, Gerson was a painter, engraver and poet, in addition to having exercised the postman's role for most of his life. He was born in 1926, moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1946, where he died in 2008, at the age of 82. The artist said that the taste for painting came from childhood in Recife. When he moved to Rio de Janeiro, he looked for Augusto Rodrigues, one of the founders of the Brazilian Art Escolinha. That's when he started to take seriously the work of a plastic artist, where he also learned techniques of engraving in metal and wood. Gerson was married to another important Brazilian Naif artist Elza de Oliveira Sousa, also deceased.
The artist always sought to portray in his works unique, urban figures, and the less favored segments of Brazilian society. Sailors, prostitutes, cangaceiros, saints, folklore and football characters have always been an inspiration for Gerson de Souza. According to critic and curator Geraldo Edson de Andrade, Gerson was a naive painter, one of the best, in truth, in the country. His painting, which largely enshrines mystical themes, from the popular religiosity of the Northeast, is expressed through rigorous design, with a good formal structure and highlighted by a sensitive color. Also according to Geraldo Edson de Andrade, the impressionism of his urban figures, perplexed and satirical, surprises in the artist, who provoke the spectator with deeply inquisitive eyes, however stuck in the northeastern soil from which they come. Characters of traditional revelries, such as Chencai or Cavalhada, can either be members of a traditional popular manifestation and false dictators, buffoons that still swarm through the Third World. Gerson seemed to have fun when he painted them, but his message is that of an amazed artist in front of beings like prostitutes, sailors and astronauts, all as pure in his eyes as the saints and blesseds who populate the religiosity of the people, also frequent themes in the his work.
Gerson's work attracts the interest of Brazilian and foreign collectors. During his lifetime, he made many exhibitions in Brazil and abroad, among them: 5th São Paulo International Biennial (1959); 13th National Salon of Modern Art, Riso de Janeiro (1964); Brazilian painters, London (1964); Itinerant Current Brazilian Art, Europe (1965); Twelve Brazilian primitive painters, Moucou, Warsaw and Prague (1966); 1st National Biennial of Fine Arts, Salvador (1966); Current Primitives of America, Madrid (1967); Brazilian lyricism, Lisbon (1968); Gerson de Souza and Elsa O. S., Rio de Janeiro (1969); Art/Brazil/Today: 50 years later, São Paulo (1972); Popular Painters and 3 Grabadores de Brasil, Mexico (1980); 2nd Exhibition of the Abelardo Rodrigues Collection of Plastic Arts, Olinda (1983); Bienal Naif do Brasil, Piracicaba (2002); Holy naivety, São Paulo (2002). His last exhibition took place at the Centro Cultural dos Correios do Rio de Janeiro, for many a farewell, such was success.
Source: http://artepopularbrasil.blogspot.com.br
