Latvijas Pasts releases a new stamp and a cover in honour of the 150th anniversary of Rihards Zariņš, one of the most outstanding Latvian artists and founders of the graphics genre in Latvia, who created sketches for various banknotes of the Free State of Latvia, including the famous five-lat coin or Milda. The first day cancellation of the stamp is scheduled to take place in the Latvian National Museum of Art at 1 Jaņa Rozentāla laukums, Riga, from 10 AM to 7 PM on the 27th of June 2019. The presentation of the stamp will be held in the same place at 11 AM and it will see the participation of the artist Lilija Dinere as well as representatives of Latvijas Pasts and the Latvian National Museum of Art.
The print run of the new stamp is 100,000 copies and its face value is € 0.57, which corresponds to the cost of sending a Class A letter within Latvia. The release of the stamp is accompanied by the issue of a special cover with a print run of 1,000 copies. The stamp and the cover have been designed by the artist Lilija Dinere.
The stamp depicts the artist’s portrait, and in its visual presentation L. Dinere used fragments of the artist’s works from the graphic drawing Meža noslēpums II (Forest Secret II) (1899) held in the collection of the Latvian National Museum of Art; images of the banknotes and ex libris from the National History Museum of Latvia; the poster Nav miris Lāčplēša gars (The Spirit of Lāčplēsis is not Dead) (1934) from the Misiņš Library of the Academic Library of the University of Latvia; and the drawing Zelmas Braueres portrets (The Portrait of Zelma Brauere) (1929) from the private collection of Pēteris Cielava. In turn, the design of the cover incorporates a fragment of R. Zariņš’s graphic drawing Mežs (Forest) (1910).
R. Zariņš (1869–1939) is the founder of the Latvian national graphics school. The artist is one of the designers of the coat of arms of the Republic of Latvia, and he also created sketches of the Republic of Latvia’s securities, paper banknotes and postage stamps in addition to designing posters, illustrating fairy tales, drawing caricatures and compiling the academic collection Latvju raksti (Latvian Ornaments) in three volumes. R. Zariņš designed sketches for a five-lat silver coin and all the first-release santims of the Free State of Latvia as well as for a series of paper banknotes.
