COVER N. 273 - USA

Postmark: First day of Issue Roy Lichtenstein - 24.04.2023 / New York NY 1019 - 24.03.2023

Posted on the 24th April; Received on the 30th June 2023

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One of those beautiful stripped air mail covers, made even more beautiful by the perfect stamps and postmarks layout.... and it really should not have been any other way, after all it is one of the 20th century's most well-known artists that is celebrated ... and painters are usually picky about form and layout and composition...

Thank you so much, Stephen, for an absolutely gorgeous cover!

I first heard about Roy Lichtenstein in high school... I can't remember if on a Drawing or a Portuguese class though. Probably the latter, since  I don't think I had drawing classes during the last two years of secondary education and also because my Portuguese teacher who was a well known writer - Virgílio Ferreira - and man of immense culture, would feed us lots of  information (particularly about the classics - he taught Latin too, IIRC-) about arts in general ... if only, at the time, I had the drive to absorb it all...

Even though I don't clearly remember where, I do have this vivid image of seeing and being impacted by images of Lichtenstein's and Jasper Johns' works in a class, them being my introduction to pop art.

Lichtenstein’s larger than life comics frames, the use of pontillism replicating enlarged printing dots, the “Bang” and “Pow”  balloons....the vivid colours,  all that made a strong impact on me ... That and the word "Pop", I presume, after all, this simple word put fine arts artists in the same league as George Harrison, Bob Dylan or Lou Reed, and that for me was like a beacon flashing in the night... "Hey, you've got to see this...."

Many years later, when my eldest daughter was spending an Erasmus season in Barcelona, I went to visit her and discovered a Roy Lichtenstein sculpture that had been commissioned on the occasion of the 92 Olympics held in Catalonia's capital. 

Gone was the absolute figurative style of the initial comic strip paintings, traded for a freer, unbound conception, aesthetically bordering surrealism, but with all the trademark elements in place: the dots, the colours, in a way even the figure itself, for the central role that human figures, heads, i. e. faces, in particular, played in his initial paintings.

El Cap de Barcelona, the Head of Barcelona, the sculpture is named... not for me though....

Love at first sight! Now, that's more like it!

Sorry for the lampost in the background.... didn't notice its presence when I pressed the shutter.... :-(

- "Portrait of a Woman" and "Standing Explosion (Red)" are the names of the paintings that illustrate the two self-adhesive Forever stamps, part of a group of 5, all graced with works of Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997), issued by USPS on 24APR2023.

The stamps are cancelled with a first day of issue postmark befittingly rather reminiscent of the graphic universe of Lichtenstein.

- Lichtenstein, rhymes with Einstein and, in a way, the latter is like one of the giant  "POWs" of the former banging on my rather limited brain, so dense are the implications of the theories that made Einstein one of those names that everybody is familiar with, although but a few understand why that is so.

On 04MAR1979, that is the precise day I become 19, USPS issued the quite fine single 15 cent in-taglio printed stamp honouring the 1921 Nobel Prize Winning physicist, on the left side of the cover.

- Steamboats have no need for Quantum Physics or Relativity, they just needed steam to force the wheels to turn, thus conquering inertia and drag and propelling the hull over the river waters. 

History has it that it was Robert Fulton (1765-1815), who first crafted and put to use one such vessel, the Clermont,  in 1807, the mighty first steamboat transporting passengers on the Hudson between New York and Albany, both ways, each representing a 240 km journey that would take about 32 hours to complete.

Fulton would also do research on submarine construction and he would produce what is acknowledged as the first practical submarine in the guise of the Nautilus, built in Rouen, France, at his own expense, in 1800, and later improved upon with funding from the French military. 

Although trials proved its efficiency and effectiveness as a weapon delivery vector (the submarine would be used to place a mine on the hull of the enemy vessel and then make it explode after gaining safe distance), the project never entered service with the French military, nor with their enemies, the British, to whom Fulton turned later to, trying to sell his invention.

On 19AUG1965, 200 years after the birth of Robert Fulton, the United States Postal Service issued the  5 cent commemorative stamp that can be seen on the cover, honouring the memory and achievements of Robert Fulton, the in taglio printed stamp being illustrated with his effigy and a profile line drawing of the Clermont.

The cover was mailed from New York, as indicated by the regular day and  First day of issue postmarks on the stamps.