To draw attention to the artistic achievements of Taiwan’s local painters, Chunghwa Post previously issued stamp sets on modern Taiwanese paintings in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2009, and 2010. It is now following up with a new set of four stamps featuring paintings from the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts: Red Sunset, By the Window, Day and Night #10, and Work No.057. Descriptions of the designs follow:
1. Lin Chih-chu’s Red Sunset (NT$8): Regarded as “the Father of Taiwan Glue Color Painting,” Lin Chih-chu (1917-2008) here takes a cubist approach to reinterpreting a mountain landscape at dusk, with monochromatic geometric shapes of light green, dark green, khaki, beige, white, brown, and black, which together form forested hills and are set against the flaming red sky at dusk. The work displays an exuberant vitality.
2. Liao Te-cheng’s By the Window (NT$8): Liao Te-cheng (1920-2015) was one of the founders of the Era Art Association. The painting is a still life featuring a triangular composition in the foreground of elegant red and white flowers in a vase along with fruits strewn across a table. The view out the window is of hazy green scenery, conveying a sense of it extending far into the distance. The bright colors in the painting pave the way for an exploration of shadow and light. By the Window conveys a sense of tranquility and spontaneity.
3. Chen Ting-shih’s Day and Night #10 (NT$10): Chen Ting-shih (1916-2002) is renowned for his woodblock prints and sculptures. This work features geometric shapes in three colors—red, white and black—in a highly balanced composition. Within the painting’s square, there is a circle sliced diagonally, as well as series of smaller black and white circles that gradually change in size, conveying a sense of momentum. The interplay of form and emptiness conveys a sense of the ever-changing positions of the sun and moon, as well as renewal.
4. Lee Chun-shan’s Work No.057 (NT$10): Lee Chun-shan (1912-1984), the guiding spirit of the Tong Fang Painting Association, had a major impact on the modern painting movement in Taiwan. He chose to identify this work by a number so that viewers would not have preconceived notions about it and could instead come to a pure appreciation of its reds, yellows and blacks and its flowing lines, thus gaining a sense of the artistic atmosphere and the artist’s state of mind at the point of creation.
A first-day cover, folders with and without crystal mounts and a loose-leaf album page will be released along with the stamps, and will go on sale on September 10, 2018. A pre-cancelled FDC with a NT$8-denominated stamp or the full set of stamps will go on sale on September 12, 2018, the stamps’ date of issuance. To purchase the relative philatelic products, please go directly to the post office branches, Postal Museum or order on line at https://stamp.post.gov.tw.