COVER N. 243 - CROATIA

Postmark: Hrvasta Posta P5121 26.04.23 

Posted on the 26th April; Received on the 3rd May 2023
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Nikola could not have been more kind, when I asked him for a stamp swap and promptly sent me the 2021 Europa  Croatian stamps I was looking for.

To do so, he also carefully composed an envelope with some nice art Croatian art stamps and sent it my way. 

Thank you so much Nikola!

Unfortunately, one of the stamps came off during transit, so the cover only exhibits two of the three stamps that constitute the set on  Croatian Painters, issued on 12OCT1994 by Hrvasta Posta (Croatian Post)

The stamp on the left is illustrated with a still life by Marino Tartaglia (1894 – 1984), a painter and a teacher at Zagreb's Academy of Fine Arts whose works show an evolution from the figurative to the abstract, probably reflecting the influences of his crossing of the Modernist period in Italy and France.

The fact that he is a well respected painter in his home country can be also inferred from the fact that his works are featured on stamps both of Yugoslavia and Croatia.

The stamp on the right end corner bears a reproduction of a painting by Milan Steiner (1894-1918).

Unfortunately Steiner lived a rather short life. It always makes you wonder when you see works of great quality, made by artists who sadly passed away in the prime of their years, what would they be producing later in their lives, had  the grim reaper chosen to go cut elsewhere...

He graduated from the Transitional Advanced School of Arts and Crafts (today’s Academy of Fine Arts) just two years before his unfortunate demise and as such he only publicly exhibited his work once, in the graduation exhibition of the works of the academy students. A sad story, but a very fine modernist artist, judging from the images I've seen of his work on the internet.

Steiner was a victim of the Spanish Flu, at the tender age of 26, in 1918, much as our great Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, who was also only 30 years old... 

I cannot find any indication of provenience in the postmark other than code P5121, which probably makes some geographic sense...