La Poste France "The Kiss" by Gustav Klimt

 

LA POSTE FRANCE issued on 2002 a commemorative First Day Cover stamps of "The Kiss", a painting Austrian symbolist painter, Gustav Klimt. The stamp designer was Sylvie Patte & Tanguy Besset who based the design on the Klimt work ar Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna. As many as 5,425,000 copies of this polychrome stamp was printed using a rotogravure method.

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918). was the initiator of the founding of the Vienna “secession” group in 1897. For Klimt, painting aimed at finding its integration into an architectural environment and his compositions which harmoniously occupy the space show arabesques, volutes, decorative patterns, abstract mosaics and gold leaf contributing to great sumptuousness.

A detail from Klimt's most famous work, "The Kiss", was painted between 1907 and 1908. It belongs to a phase of creation called the golden phase when Klimt incorporated gold leaf in his paintings. The beauty of this painting is based as much on the precious (and equivocal) value given to it by the use of gold as on the representation of a loving couple, global, cosmic, both linked to nature and isolated. of the world. It has been suggested the couple was actually Klimt and his wife.