Portugal 1999 - What Is It?

This is easily identified as Portugal and I think the date is 1999. My question: What is it? Some sort of abstract art? My catalogs aren't new enough to show this issue, so I thought someone on SCF could fill me in.



Looks odd, to say the least.

It looks like some sort of weird alien or sea creature.

It is Scott #2312 (1.75/0.90) part of a 5 stamp set featuring works by the 'Surrealist Group of Lisbon.' This one is by Antonio Domingues, born in 1921. The book doesn't say what it is supposed to represent.

I think you got it right, Laswabbie, "some sort of weird alien or sea creature."

All painters contribute to a collective.
each stamp is a conribution to the whole

Exquisite Corpse

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exquisite_corpse

(we used to play the game when we were kids,
probably most here did, fold a sheet of paper 4 or 5 times
and each person draws a section of the body)

The end result is met with guffaws generally.

The composite picture of the 5 stamps in the mini-sheet appear in this link:

***link removed***

That thing looks a bit like one of the bugs in that Starship Troopers movie...

Nice work 22crows.

Thanks for all the responses. I'm still not sure exactly what it is. (Ugly, though.)

Actually, I looked at the entire sheetlet posted in the above link, and I can't make anything out of ANY of the stamps of that sheet! I don't think (I hope) that I am alone in that observation.

I just wonder what the people of Portugal thought of that stamp when it was offered for postal use?

Not that I know a great deal about art,
but it seems to be in the genre of Salvador Dali
and his "melting clocks". which appeared on stamps also.

I think I knew that girl.

Somehow I got the first impression that it was Cervantes' Don Quixote throwing a saddle on his horse while in his dream state. But that would have been Sancho doing the saddling.

Looks like a long thin tall man in old stylistic armour and clothing.

I'll chime into this topic. This is part of a 1999 set celebrating 50 Years of Surrealism in Portugal.

I actually think the sheet is pretty intriguing. Terribly difficult to

5 artists combined in one big sheetlet, all Portuguese artists:

- António Domingues (stamp in first post)
- António Pedro (bottom left)
- Vespeira (middle)
- Fernando de Azevedo (top right)
- Moniz Pereira (bottom right)

The painting is in the Calouste Gulbenkian museum in Lisbon and is called "CADAVRE EXQUIS" (Exquisite Corpse): http://cam.gulbenkian.pt/index.php?...0&position=1
It is an oil painting.

Rod had already posted the link to the Exquisite Corpse concept from Wikipedia.

Edit: I just noticed the link 22crows posted doesn't exist anymore, so here's the sheet from my Picasa account: