Art in Yugoslavia throughout the centuries, Yugoslavia

Well hello everyone!

After some breath of fresh air last week, here we are back to my standard ramblings and modest collections, sorry :D But at least now I have someone to chip in for the times I feel lazy, out of ideas/stamps, or to simply make it more fun and versatile.

Today it is the letter N that is on the menu, and for that occasion I have chosen this set of 6 stamps of beautiful paintings of Nudes, coming from a number of different artists from the former Yugoslavia.

This set was issued on 28 November 1969 and shows reproductions of the works of some of the Yugoslav artists from the XIX / XX century.

The top row of stamps starts with one by Nikola Martinovski (August 18, 1903 – February 7, 1973) who is considered the founder of the Contemporary Macedonian art and here is presented with his painting called Young Gypsy with a Rose.

The middle stamp shows a painting by Sava Šumanović (22 January 1896–30 August 1942),born in nowadays Croatia here, with his painting The girl in the Red Armchair. (1932-1934). He had
managed to develop his own, rather original artistic expression, which he simply called "the way I know and can." Due to innovations and unique style, Šumanović can be described as one of the most prominent Yugoslav painters of the twentieth century as well as a major painter from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

The last stamp in this row shows a painting by Marino Tartaglia (3 August 1894 – 21 April 1984) who was a Croatian painter and art teacher, for many years a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, and had also received the Vladimir Nazor Award for lifetime achievement in the arts in 1964.
His painting on the stamp is titled Combing and dates from the year of 1924.

The bottom row starts with the painting Nude Olynpia by Miroslav Kraljević (1885–1913) who was a Croatian painter, printmaker and sculptor, and was one of the founders of modern art in Croatia. He had died at a very young age from tuberculosis unfortunately - he was only 27.

The middle stamp shows the painting Bathing Girl by Jovan Bijelić (30 June 1884 or 19 June 1886 - 12 March 1964) who was a Bosnian-Herzegovian and Serbian painter, and one of the most important Yugoslav visual artists between the world wars. He is also one of the most important representatives of color expressionism.

The last stamp in this series is a painting by Matej Šternen (20 September 1870 – 28 June 1949) who was a leading Slovene Impressionist painter and here is represented with his work from 1914, called Woman on a Sofa.

I do appreciate all types of art, though I cannot say I am a huge fan of this kind. However what I admire about it is the courage of these women posing showing their perfectly imperfect bodies (presumably they were actually posing and these paintings have not been done based on the artists' imagination). It is just really compelling!

So thank you for your attention today and now go over to today's Sunday Stamps edition for the rest of the N-entries :)

400 years since Rembrandt's birth, joint issue between Netherlands and Germany

here comes a small piece of art for today's Sunday stamps

I picked this cover with the sheet issued in 2006, to commemorate the 400 years since the birth of this great dutch painter and etcher. He was born on 15 July 1606 and died on 4 October 1669.

Im pretty sure you know quite a lot about him, so I wont be holding on to his general life, but will try to explain what's on the stamps here.

the set consists of 5 stamps plus a vignette, containing the information.
all stamps have a face value of 0,39 euros, and this is actually a joint issue between Netherlands and Germany, which has arisen some controversies, esp regarding a 70c stamp of Saskia in the prestige booklet, which the German's found invalid, since he printing - made in the Netherlands - was different from the prinitng made in Germany for the German sheetlets. The Dutch one actually contained the text in German and in some catalogue listings was said to be good for postage only in the Netherlands, which on the overall is rather confusing as to what's what, so i wont go into depth about it here.


Anyways, as for the stamps here, they all show Rembrandt's works. The top left stamp shows us Saskia van Uylenburgh in a pompous dress (Rembrandt's wife). The portrait was done sometime around 1642 and can be found at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Kassel.

The stamp next to it shows a portrait of Titus reading, c.1657-1658 (Rembrant's son) at The Kunsthistorisches Museum (or the Museum of Fine Arts) in Vienna.

The third stamp in that row shows us the painting called "Woman in a doorway", c. 1656-1657, and can be found at the Gemäldegalerie (or the Art Museum) in Berlin.

As for the bottom stamps, the both show etchings, where the one on the left shows us the "Bearded man, in a furred oriental cap and robe", from 1631, which some consider to be a portrait of Rembrand's father. This can be found at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, while the other one shows us the artist's mother seated at a table, c.1629 - 1633, which can again be found at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

for some more artistic inputs, click on the big button below

UNICEF, Sharjah & Dependencies

Something from my old collections....

In 1970 Sharjah and the dependencies (which included Kalba, Khor Fakkan, and Dibbah), issued a lovely set of stamps on the subject of UNICEF with Paintings of Children. The whole set consists of 18 stamps, and unfortunately, I only own 9 of those, or to be more precise, I only have the 5 dh ones, which were intended for regular postage. The other 9 stamps in the set have different values, raging from 20dh to 3 rl, intended for air mail. 
The paintings are from famous artists like Goya, Renoir, Murillo etc. 
 The titles of these paintings are as followed, starting from top...left to right:


- The Dance, Watteau  
- Don Sebastian de Bonabon, Goya
- Children eating grapes and melons, Murillo
- Children playing with dices, Murillo
- Princess Margareta Theresia, Velasquez
- Julie Manet with cat, Renoir
- Portrait of a child, Rubens
- Little Peasant o balcony, Murillo
- The little fruit merchant, Murillo


It would be more than great if anyhow I could get the rest of the stamps in the set, though I find it rather unbelievable.


As for Sharjah...it opened its own post office On 10 July 1963, and began to issue its stamps and postal stationery. Sharjah and its dependencies joined the UAE on 2 December 1971, but it continued to issue its own stamps. On 31 July 1972, the UAE assumed full postal responsibilities. Nevertheless, Sharjah continued to use its own stamps until the issuance of the first UAE definitive series on 1 January 1973.