1998 32c Alexander Calder: "Portrait of a Young Man"

US #3201
1998 Portrait of a Young Man

• Part of set of 5 stamps featuring sculptures of Alexander Calder
• Issued in honor of the 100^th year of his birth
  
  

Stamp Category:  Commemorative
Set:  Alexander Calder
Value:  32¢, First Class Mail Rate
First Day of Issue:  March 25, 1998
First Day City:  Washington, DC
Quantity Issued:  16,000,000
Printed by:  Stamp Venturers
Printing Method:  Photogravure
Format:  Pane of 20
Perforations:  10.2

Why the stamp was issued:  This is part of a set of five stamps issued to honor 100 years since sculptor Alexander Calder’s birth.

About the stamp design:  USPS art director Derry Noyes had known Calder from her childhood.  She chose five of the thousands of sculptures he had created for use on the stamps to represent his different styles of work.   

Special design details:  Two different black inks were used – line black for the lines and tone black for the shadows.

First Day City:  The First Day of Issue ceremony took place at the National Gallery in Washington, DC.  An exhibit of Calder’s work opened at the gallery four days later.

Unusual fact about these stamps:  The USPS produced 5,500 uncut press sheets of these stamps.  They were only available through its Stamp Fulfillment Services.  The postal service didn’t’ announce the sale, so collectors were unaware of the stamps until they were reported in a Linn’s Stamp News article.  After the article was published, the stamps sold out in less than two weeks.

About Alexander Calder: Alexander Calder was born on July 22, 1898, in Lawnton, Pennsylvania.  He came from a family of artists – his father and grandfather produced numerous sculptures in Philadelphia, and his mother was a portrait painter.  Calder produced his first sculpture in 1902 when he was four years old.  Calder’s family moved numerous times before settling in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, where Calder met his father’s friend Everett Shinn.  Together they built gravity powered mechanical trains. 
Calder’s parents didn’t want him to have to struggle as most artists did, so they encouraged him to go to college in another field.  He had a talent for engineering since childhood, so he chose mechanical engineering and enrolled in the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey.  During his time in college, Calder trained at the Plattsburg Civilian Military Training Camp and joined the Student’s Army Training Corps.
After graduating in 1919, Calder worked as a hydraulic engineer and draughtsman for the New York Edison Company.  He then worked as a mechanic on a passenger ship.   During his travels, he saw beautiful scenery that made him decide to return to New York to become an artist.  Calder then enrolled in the Art Students League and found work at the National Police Gazette.  Among his assignments was sketching the Ringling Brothers circus, a theme he would frequently revisit in his later artwork.
In 1926, Calder moved to Paris to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.  While there, he created a miniature-animated circus from wire, cork, and cloth that caught the attention of the artistic elite.  Artist Marcel Duchamp called Calder’s moving art “mobiles” and the name stuck.  Another artist, Jean Arp, gave his stationary sculptures the equally interesting name “stabiles.”
Although most of his work was of animals, Calder did some abstract sculptures.  These were soon given their own unique term, “Watchama-Calders.”  In later years, Calder’s work took on monumental sizes and can be seen in public buildings like John F. Kennedy Airport, and the Hart Senate Office Building.  Calder died from a heart attack on November 11, 1976, shortly after opening a major retrospective show at the Whitney Museum in New York.  He posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom the following year.

History the stamp represents:  Calder created Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in 1947.  Standing about three feet tall, it’s made of sheet metal painted red.  It is housed at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.