ARTIST: Paul Calle (Connecticut, New York, 1928 - 2010) & Chris Calle (US,Born 1961)
NAME: Streamlined Design
YEAR: 1998
MEDIUM: mixed media on board
CONDITION: Excellent.
SIGHT SIZE: 15 x 12 inches / 38 x 30 cm
BOARD SIZE: 20 x 16 inches / 50 x 40 cm
SIGNATURE: lower right
NOTE: This painting was originally published on the Fleetwood First Day Cover for the U.S. 32? Streamlin Design/1930's 20th Century stamps issued September 10, 1998. Prior to the early 20th century, ornamentation was universally regarded as a necessary component of product design. Products were deemed incomplete -- even soulless -- without lavish adornment. By the 1930s, however, such pretentious ornamentation fell out of favor with designers. In 1932, Walter Maria Kersting's book, The Living Form, stated designers should create "simple and inexpensive objects, that should not appear more than what they are." The same year, Norman Bel Geddes published Horizons, an influential work that enthusiastically promoted smooth, organic shapes for aircraft, ships and cars. In 1933, the revolutionary Douglas DC-1 aircraft appeared. With its all-metal structure, stressed aluminum skin, and wings that were integrated into the fuselage, the plane made a dramatic impact on all future aircraft designs. Douglas soon followed this landmark achievement with the DC-2 and DC-3. A pilot of the era commented, "one glance at their aerodynamically clean lines and handsome, stressed-skin finish was enough to emphasize their advance over all contemporary design." This aesthetic gained even greater impetus after 1934, when the Nazi Party dissolved the Bauhaus, Germany's famous school of design, architecture and applied arts. Many designers of the Bauhaus emigrated to the United States, bringing their streamlined design principles with them.
PROVENANCE: Collection of James A. Helzer (1946-2008), Founder of Unicover Corporation.
CATEGORY: antique vintage painting
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SKU#: 120040
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BIOGRAPHY:
Paul Calle, Postage Stamp Designer, Is Dead at 82 By MARGALIT FOX The cause was melanoma, said his son Chris, who is also a stamp designer. A longtime Stamford resident, Mr. Calle (pronounced KAL-ee) designed more than 40 United States stamps, licked by generations of postwar Americans. He was best known for the 10-cent stamp, commissioned by NASA and issued in 1969, commemorating the Apollo 11 moon landing that year. His other stamps include ones honoring Gen. Douglas MacArthur (1971), Robert Frost (1974), the International Year of the Child (1979), Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan (1980), Frederic Remington (1981), Pearl S. Buck (1983), the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1984) and folk-art carousel horses (1988 and again, with new artwork, in 1995). Mr. Calle's work has been exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City and elsewhere. With Chris, he designed two 1994 stamps a 29-cent first-class stamp and a $9.95 express-mail stamp commemorating the moon landing's 25th anniversary. Father and son also collaborated on stamps for Sweden, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and the United Nations. Paul Calle was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan on March 3, 1928. He earned a bachelor's degree from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and during the Korean War was an illustrator for the Army. Early in his career, Mr. Calle did cover artwork for science-fiction pulp magazines like Galaxy, Fantasy Fiction and Super Science Stories, as well as for general-interest publications like The Saturday Evening Post. In 1962, he was among the inaugural group of artists chosen for the NASA Art Program, a documentary record of the space program that has produced thousands of works to date. Mr. Calle's early art for the program includes a pair of 5-cent stamps, issued in 1967, depicting the Gemini casule and the astronaut Ed White making the first American spacewalk in 1965. On July 16, 1969, the day Apollo 11 was launched, Mr. Calle was the only artist allowed to observe the astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin, as they readied themselves for the mission eating breakfast, donning their spacesuits and the like. He captured their preparations in a series of intimate pen-and-ink sketches later exhibited at the National Air and Space Museum. That morning, when the astronauts lifted off, one of the things they carried was the engraved printing plate of Mr. Calle's commemorative stamp. As the moon lacked a post office, a proof made from the plate was hand-canceled by the men aboard the spacecraft. Mr. Calle's wife, the former Olga Wyhowanec, whom he married in 1951, died in 2003. Besides his son Chris, he is survived by another son, Paul P., a veterinarian at the Bronx Zoo; a daughter, Claudia Calle Beal; and six grandchildren. Interviewed after the moon landing, Mr. Calle divulged the secret of his rigorous craft: "When you do a stamp," he said, "think big, but draw small."