(09/10/1962 + 10/08/2020 Brazil/Mato Grosso/Rondonópolis/Cuiabá/
Adir Sodré de Souza. Painter, draftsman, singer, craftsman, verbal critic of art and music, serious follower of politics and studious of life, in all quarters.
He must have started drawing on pages of notebooks (notebooks, when they were made of wire, were better, but they were more expensive, rarer), on loose paper, on the floor, on walls. What is certain is that he attended the Atelier Livre of the Cultural Foundation of Mato Grosso, under the guidance of Dalva Maria de Barros (1935) and Humberto Espíndola (1943). What is certain is that he was recognized practically immediately by Aline Figueiredo, the first recognition, the most important of all the many others that came. He was born, as an artist, naïve, primitive, naïf, to translate, in painting, the denunciation of the world's inequalities, the world's misery, but, above all, the coloring of the world, the diversity of everything. And he never stopped mixing colors, gestures, influences, knowledge, rhythms, music, in his painting, in his drawings, in his objects. He was Mattissiano when he wanted or needed it, he came back, because he had never stopped being, naive, caboclo, when he felt like it. At that beginning, his name was always remembered along with that of his friend and competitor Gervane de Paula (1962), later the great milestone of his career was the collective How Are You, Generation 80?, at Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro. And the world of the arts opened up for the boy from Pedregal: he conquered spaces, critics, museums, walls, magazines, newspapers and collections. He was a good manager of his career, conquering space, recognition, criticism. He maintained an extensive network of relationships, contacts, friends and businessmen. He had lost the naivety of life a long time ago. Finally, I think he had seen that the game was troppo heavy, he was quieter, more withdrawn, painting in his backyard for his backyard (Cuiaba); taking care of the mind, the body, rehearsing new flights, promising to return, one day, to conquer the world again and again, but “death carried him, like a package, in its mantle”. Belchior, Didí's friend, and who predicted this verse, never errs, erring forever.