Latvian Post marks Teodors Zaļkalns anniversary with stamp

Latvian Post will issue a stamp and first-day cover honouring sculptor Teodors Zaļkalns for the 150th anniversary of his birth, LSM reported. The new philatelic issue will be available from October 16.

Artist Lilija Dinere designed the stamp and cover around Zaļkalns’s marble portrait of Ludmila Jakubovska, dated 1913/1966 and held in the Latvian National Museum of Art collection. The work marked an important turning point in his practice and the development of sculpture, as he deliberately explored the architectural structure of form. While the influence of French sculptor Auguste Rodin remains apparent, the portrait also points towards Zaļkalns’s later period of classical modernism. It combines the texture of untreated surfaces with carefully worked details.

Art historian Irēna Bužinska describes Zaļkalns, who lived from 1876 to 1972, as part of the first generation of professional Latvian sculptors. His long career spanned genres and materials, particularly granite, and helped establish Latvian stone-sculpture traditions.

His 1916 sculpture Seated Mother, included in the Latvian Cultural Canon, depicts the experiences of refugees during the First World War and became a symbol of national tragedy. His animal sculpture Sitting Pig, made in 1937, has won the greatest popularity and affection among the public, Bužinska wrote.

Most of Zaļkalns’s creative legacy, including sculptures, sketches, photographs, manuscripts and memorial objects, is held at the Latvian National Museum of Art. Latvian Post and the museum have worked together on the stamp series Outstanding Latvian Artists since 2017.