Issue date: 13 Apr, 2021
PAINTING. MAIL ART
Mail Art means an original artistic creation expressed through postal distribution.
This discipline can take many forms, from messages to collages, objects, or poems.
This form of art has a large audience, often unknown to the artist, who takes a step outside the traditional channels of art distribution.
The 5th International Exhibition of Mail Art in Avilés, with the title “Earth”, received over 500 works of postal art from 37 different countries, and for the first time, one of them was chosen to become a stamp commemorating Mail Art - the first official stamp featuring this artistic discipline to be issued anywhere in the world.
The selected work shows a world globe protected by a gas mask, in a metaphor drawing attention to the pollution affecting our planet. The work is by García de Marina (Gijón, 1975), a Spanish photographer who is also well-known abroad.
This stamp marks the start of a series, which will continue next year with the subject “Air”.
Photographs by García de Marina have already been shown in many publications, and he also takes part in solo and group exhibitions, including DIÁLO2, a project gathering dialogues between de Marina and Joan Brossa, one of the leading figures in 20th-century visual poetry in Spain; and La Palabra Inacabada, an exhibition in which the photographer explores the relationship between written and visual language, emphasising the power of imagination.
Once again, the stamp is a kind of “meta-stamp”, making it a work of art in itself.
Apart from its postal value, although of course it is still valid postage, this issue will have an important place in the history of stamps.
Rate A - €0.75. For a “standard” letter or postcard within Spain, up to 20 g.
Rate A2 - €0.85. For a “standard” letter or postcard within Spain, between 20 g and 50 g.
Rate B - €1.65. For a “standard” Ordinary International letter or postcard addressed to Europe (including Greenland), up to 20 g.
Rate C - €1.75. For a “standard” Ordinary International letter or postcard addressed to the rest of the world (except USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand), up to 20 g.
Rate D - €2.10. For a “standard” Ordinary International letter or postcard addressed to the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, up to 20 g.