© Paulo ItoPaulo Ito's painting of a starving child with only a football to eat has gone viral.
Paulo Ito, a street artist, painted the mural on a school in Sao Paulo on 10 May and a photo of the artwork has since been shared more than 50,000 times on Facebook alone.
The city has been at the centre of repeated and sometimes violent protests against the government's £6.5 billion spending on the World Cup when the money is so badly needed elsewhere.
"People already have the feeling and that image condensed this feeling," he told slate.com.
"The truth is there is so much wrong in Brazil that it is difficult to know where to start," he said.
"I didn't mean [to say] nobody is doing anything against poverty but we need to show the world or ourselves that the situation is still not good."
Mass street demonstrations against poverty, political corruption, underfunded public services and Brazil's creaking urban infrastructure started last June during the Confederations Cup.
And the World Cup has galvanised Brazilians' weariness over the failures in parts of their society, boiling over into violent clashes with the police at protests in Sao Paulo.
Thousands of teenagers from working-class suburbs have been invading middle-class shopping centres in so-called "rolezinhos", sparking a heavy-handed response from police and legal attempts by malls to stop them entering.
As the discontent continued, the government was planning to launch a feel-good publicity campaign to convince locals of the benefits of hosting the World Cup.
What is more interesting is how the local president hasn't done much in regards to the issue. A few speeches, the usual promises and some token legislation that hasn't passed yet ( I think), but she hasn't taken the 'bull by the horns' and doesn't seem to have a desire to do so, as if that isn't her role in this play. This is usually a situation that a good politician could jump and run with, but has anyone down there done that? If not, why not? That speaks volumes IMO... like elsewhere, the landscape is so controlled that the energy is wasted as it is expelled and falls on silent ears... promoting more reactions from the masses... which seems so expected, as if tempting them to initiate their rulers plans.
Perhaps it just the usual graft and corruption, but that spells out opportunity for the opposition, or it should... the army continues to be sent in to 'clean up' the mess created by the state in its arrogance and denial of responsibility to the problems of the state... sounds like most countries these days... as if everyone is playing the game with the same playbook.... or almost. Most seem to be jockeying for position in the NWO, establishing their place in the chain of command as nothing gets done to actually combat the problems, just the people complaining about them... interesting.