Modern art on stamps

Love this subject looking forward to seeing more posts, I am currently reading The Gilded Gutter Life Of Francis Bacon: The Authorized Biography by Daniel Farson

Great points, stanley64 ! I have favorite artists and works from nearly all of those schools, but my emphasis tends to be on 20th century art: Abstract Expressionism, Conceptual Art, Minimalism, Pop Art... There's lots more for me to learn when it comes to art on stamps. I have to thank you for introducing me to Bernard Buffet; reading up on his life and the backstory of that gorgeous stamp you shared was very interesting.

Mark Rothko is one of my favorite artists. His work has been celebrated on at least two U.S. stamps, one in 1998 and one in 2010, as well as a French issue and one from Latvia, where he was born (back before it was Latvia). I had family members who were born in another part of the Russian Empire around the same time as Rothko, and who ended up in New York, too, so his story resonates with me. Visiting the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, is one of the most profound experiences I've had with art.

This is all a long-winded way to introduce this FDC of the 1998 US Rothko stamp (Scott 3236t), which was issued as part of a twenty-stamp pane of American artists. The painting depicted is "No. 12," from 1951, around his peak. I appreciate the understated cachet, which shows the muted darkness of one of his later works.... although I'm not sure why the cachetmakers placed it sideways!



Looking forward to seeing more of everyone's stamps in this vast, wonderful topic!

Marc Chagall is one of my favorite early modern representational painters. His work has been featured on many stamps from around the world, including a 1967 U.N. sheetlet that I’ve seen posted elsewhere on the forum, showing the stained-glass window he contributed to the U.N. headquarters in memory of Dag Hammarskjöld, and several stamps from Israel.

I love this stamp from France, issued in November 1963 with an image of Chagall’s dreamily romantic 1913 painting Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel. As you can see, it came to me with what looks like a First Day of Issue postmark on the selvage, though the stamp itself is not cancelled. I wonder if that means it was soaked off of a FDC, or if La Poste would have put a postmark like that directly on a sheet of new stamps?

Either way, it’s made a very nice addition to the “art gallery” I’ve been setting up on a Vario page.

Ellsworth Kelly was honored in 2019 with a USPS set of 10 stamps dedicated to his brightly colored minimalist artwork (Scott 5382-5391). It’s a very nice set. I have two individual FDCs from this series: One for “Spectrum I,” a painting from 1953, and another for “Blue Red Rocker,” which is actually a three-dimensional aluminum sculpture from 1963. Kelly’s clean lines and vivid colors lend themselves well to the dimensions of the stamps.




I also have a used single of Kelly’s “Yellow and White.”



Kelly had a fascinating life. As a young man, he served in World War II as part of the Ghost Army, a secret project of the U.S. Army filled with artists, engineers, and others who used artifice and creativity to mislead enemy troops and save lives.

That's too bad JeffS! I haven't seen them as often as I'd like either. I was lucky to get this one a couple of years ago on a letter from an artist friend.

A couple more recent additions to my small "modern art museum" on stamps...

One features a 1969 image from Gerhard Richter’s long series of eerie, hyperrealistic Seestück (Seascape) paintings. The stamp is a 145-cent German issue from 2013. In my corner of the world, Richter’s best-known work may be his Kerze (Candle) paintings, one of which appears on the cover of the art-rock band Sonic Youth’s brilliant 1988 double album Daydream Nation. But now I’m rambling on about my other interests…



Getting back on topic, I found a very funny essay (link) about these Richter stamps, riffing on the ideas of mass reproduction and cancellation/destruction of art. At least, I hope it’s intended as a joke.



And here’s a 2003 stamp issued by France to celebrate Andy Warhol, with one of his most iconic images of Marilyn Monroe. To my mind, this stamp captures Warhol’s greatness so much better than the comparatively staid U.S. issue I posted earlier in this thread. Bold, colorful, campy, unforgettable. Perhaps France just gets Warhol better than the U.S. (or at least its postal administration) does.

Here’s an example of how much stamps can teach us. I didn’t know much about the Cuban-American artist Emilio Sanchez before USPS chose four of his works from the 1970s and 1980s for stamps last summer. His minimal, graphic style, right on the edge of abstraction and representation, grew on me as I continued to see the stamps in subsequent months, and I ended up tracking down this FDC from Panda Cachets featuring all four designs. I find the last one (“Untitled / Ventanita Entreabierta,” with a single half-open window on a green background) particularly evocative.

Now I have a new artist to read up on and keep an eye out for on museum visits! To me, that’s one of the coolest things a postal service can provide.

Here's something by Zakarias Heinesen, an artist from the Faeroe Islands.



I believe this is a paper collage, as I found a couple of other works that were identified as such and that had a similar look and feel to them. (The Scott catalog lists it as a collage, too, but that didn't absolve me from the task of looking it up.)

Other things I know about Heinesen:

* His father was a prominent novelist.

* He's still around and is about 85 years old.

* Most places on the Internet spell it "Zacharias". I went to one of the few that spelled it correctly, and was greeted with "no biographical information is available for this artist."

That's about it. I've never been into the Faeroe Islands philatelically speaking, but they seem to have an incredibly rich cultural heritage for a place that has some 50,000 people and whose home language is apparently fairly distinct from standard Danish.

Those desgins of Asawa in the OP are very interesting. This topic is for me a inteliectual lnterest but as a proffesional Artist of the older school of realism and Impressionism i wont be seeking out any stamps with so called Modern Art on them. It was a strange and overtime I feel will be a dead end diversion into a realm that is so counter to all of my own foundational beliefs about art that led to this long period of abstraction. It varies but in principle is based on a totally personal created theme to creative work. It has no outside refernce, other than being similar to other similar works. So it is a chaotic realm and for me, not one i have ever had any real belief in but i am glad to see that many countries have decided to issue stamps based on it for I know many like and enjoy this kind of art.

thanks for the post was fun to see.

Chris