Frightful Women on Stamps

There is no criteria to tell the bad art from the good one (*)

    The works featured below are all creations of Pablo Picasso, the most famous modern painter. It is appropriate that I let you know the full names of these paintings, because there is a good chance that you will never guess which was the intention of the artist. 

      Here they are, from left to right: The Muse, Seated Woman, Nude with Raised Arms, The Dyad, Woman by a Window. If you are not filled with enthusiasm, you are not alone, and you have my full sympathy. This is the reason why that kind of modern art is not represented elsewhere on this site.

      And my last discovery: Nude in an Armchair, on a stamp from Redonda (doubtful country, for a doubtful art) and of Central African Republic (idem). Both issued in 1981 to commemorate Picasso's 100th birth anniversary.

        These works remind me an old joke. A young lady says to her friend in a dark cinema hall: "Sorry, what you are searching for is not there, my dear, because, you know,  I'm a Picasso kind of woman." The legend says that after that painful experience the young man has decided to become a monk, has never watched another film and must has dreamt each night only about ladies similar to those exhibited on the present page.

     Please meet his spiritual followers, as shown above on two maximum cards from Liechtenstein. The first is the work of the German master Paul Wunderlich, called "Dame mit Schosshund (Lady with the Lap Dog)", issued the 4th of December 1995, Sc. 1067. The second maximum card was issued on 22nd August 1997 and displays the "masterwork" of the Italian painter Enrico Baj "Jeune fille en fleur", Sc. 1100. Both works appeared in a art series of the Liechtenstein post, named "Homage to Liechtenstein". Up to you to decide which one represents a better homage to this nice country particularly and to the feminine beauty generally.

     Another follower is surely the Austrian artist Franz Rigel. I suppose that everyone will appreciate his masterwork "Head of a woman", that appeared on an Austrian stamp on the 7th of October 1994.

(*) Marc-Olivier Wahler, by October 2000 the Director of the New York Swiss Institute. Bieler Tagblatt, 8/5/00, p. 8.

Link. Modern Art: A Skeptical View