New U.S. Postage Stamps Commemorate Modern Art in America

With this sheet of 12 Modern Art in America 1913-1931 (Forever®) stamps, the U.S. Postal Service commemorates a dozen modern artists and their works, 100 years after the groundbreaking Armory Show opened in New York in 1913.

The dozen masterpieces reproduced on the stamp pane were created between 1912 and 1931 and include:

• House and Street (1931) | Stuart Davis
• I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (1928) | Charles Demuth
• The Prodigal Son (1927) | Aaron Douglas
• Fog Horns (1929) | Arthur Dove 
• Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912) | Marcel Duchamp 
• Painting, Number 5 (1914-15) | Marsden Hartley
• Sunset, Maine Coast (1919) | John Marin
• Razor (1924) | Gerald Murphy
• Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico/Out Back of Marie's II (1930) | Georgia O’Keeffe 
• Noire et Blanche (1926) | Man Ray 
• American Landscape (1930) | Charles Sheeler
• Brooklyn Bridge (1919-20) | Joseph Stella

The International Exhibition of Modern Art, known as the Armory Show, opened in New York City on February 17, 1913. This exhibit, held at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue at 25th Street, presented more than a thousand works, about a third of them by European artists.

At the Armory Show, Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 excited derision as well as admiration. Duchamp and other European painters greatly influenced American artists, including those who created the works shown on this stamp pane. Like Duchamp, who became a U.S. citizen, modern art—and modernity itself—soon found a congenial home in America.

The stamp sheet also includes a quote by Marcel Duchamp and verso text that identifies each work of art and briefly tells something about each artist. Art director Derry Noyes worked on the stamp sheet with designer Margaret Bauer.

Check out my previous blog post about the children's book written and illustrated in response to the Armory Show here.