Flavio de Carvalho: Media Artist Avant la Lettre

Fig. 5. Flàvio de Carvalho's postage stamps, created in 1932, are among the earliest pieces of mail art. (Photo: Biblioteca da Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de São Paulo [FAU-USP]). The artist tried, unsuccessfully, to obtain official approval for the stamps by the Brazilian postal system. One of the stamps shows an expressionist nude with a stylized structure (a modernist building?) in the background; another includes the critical sentence "A people without vision will perish." The last stamp shows a standing figure.

This article is part of the Leonardo special project A Radical Intervention: The Brazilian Contribution to the International Electronic Art Movement," guest edited by Eduardo Kac.

For the print version of this article, see Leonardo Volume 37, No. 2 (2004), available from the MIT Press.

Updated 31 April 2010