Gerson de Souza (Recife PE 1926 - Rio de Janeiro RJ 2008)
Painter, draftsman, printmaker, woodcarver.
Gerson Alves de Souza was one of the most important and expressive representatives of Brazilian naïve art. A native of Recife, Pernambuco, Gerson was a painter, printmaker and poet, and for much of his life also worked as a mail carrier. He was born in 1926 and moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1946, where he died in 2008 at the age of 82. The artist used to say that his love of painting dated back to his childhood in Recife. When he moved to Rio de Janeiro, he sought out Augusto Rodrigues, one of the founders of the Escolinha de Arte do Brasil. That was when he began to take his work as a visual artist seriously, and there he also learned intaglio and woodcut techniques. Gerson was married to another important Brazilian naïve artist, Elza de Oliveira Sousa, who has also since died.
In his works, the artist always sought to portray singular urban figures and the less privileged segments of Brazilian society. Sailors, prostitutes, cangaceiros [backland bandits], saints, and characters from folklore and football were always a source of inspiration for Gerson de Souza. According to the critic and curator Geraldo Edson de Andrade, Gerson was a naïve painter, indeed one of the best in the country. His painting, largely devoted to mystical themes from Northeastern popular religiosity, is expressed through rigorous drawing, with sound formal structure, enhanced by sensitive color. Again according to Geraldo Edson de Andrade, what is surprising in the artist is the impressionism of his urban figures, bewildered and satirical, which challenge the viewer with deeply inquisitive eyes, while remaining rooted in the Northeastern soil from which they come. Characters from traditional festivities, such as the Chegança or the Cavalhada, may equally be participants in a traditional popular celebration or false dictators, buffoons who still abound in the Third World. Gerson seemed to enjoy himself as he painted them, but his message is that of an artist astonished by beings such as prostitutes, sailors and astronauts, all as pure in his eyes as the saints and holy men who people popular religiosity, also frequent themes in his work.
Gerson's work attracts the interest of Brazilian and foreign collectors. During his lifetime, he took part in many exhibitions in Brazil and abroad, including: the 5th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo (1959); the 13th Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro (1964); Pintores Brasileiros [Brazilian Painters], London (1964); the traveling exhibition Arte Brasileira Atual [Current Brazilian Art], Europe (1965); Doze Pintores Primitivos Brasileiros [Twelve Brazilian Primitive Painters], Moscow, Warsaw and Prague (1966); the 1st Bienal Nacional de Artes Plásticas, Salvador (1966); Primitivos Atuais da América [Current Primitives of the Americas], Madrid (1967); Lirismo Brasileiro [Brazilian Lyricism], Lisbon (1968); Gerson de Souza e Elsa O. S., Rio de Janeiro (1969); Arte/Brasil/Hoje: 50 anos depois [Art/Brazil/Today: 50 Years Later], São Paulo (1972); Pintores Populares y 3 Grabadores de Brasil, Mexico (1980); the 2nd Exhibition of the Abelardo Rodrigues Visual Arts Collection, Olinda (1983); the Bienal Naif do Brasil, Piracicaba (2002); and Santa Ingenuidade [Holy Innocence], São Paulo (2002). His last exhibition took place at the Centro Cultural dos Correios in Rio de Janeiro and, given its great success, was seen by many as a farewell.
Source: http://artepopularbrasil.blogspot.com.br
