A set of five forever stamps commemorating post office murals was issued April 10 in a pane of 10.

The stamps show artwork commissioned during the Great Depression to decorate federal buildings.

America’s post office murals were created primarily during the Great Depression that ensued following the 1929 stock market crash. In line with the many work programs developed by the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt beginning in 1933, artists were commissioned by the Treasury Department’s Section of Fine Arts to create paintings and sculptures intended to beautify public buildings.

Federal post offices, many of them built during the same period, received several of these artworks. Artists around the country sought to provide scenes relating to the community where the artwork would be displayed. Over the years, some of this artwork has been lost, painted over or destroyed, but more than 1,000 works remain on display in post offices all over the country. The Postal Service is committed to the upkeep of these classic paintings and has a federal preservation officer and historian to both help maintain the beauty of the murals. Today, many of these works have been restored and remain on display for the public to enjoy.

The murals featured on the stamps are Kiowas Moving Camp (1936) from the Anadarko, Okla., post office; Mountains and Yucca (1937), Deming, N.M.; Antelope (1939), Florence, Colo.; Sugarloaf Mountain (1940), Rockville, Md.; and Air Mail (1941), Piggott, Ark. The stamps each include an inscription naming the city and state where the artwork is located.

The historic Anadarko post office building houses a massive mural depicting the ceremonial and social life of the Plains American Indians. The work consists of 16 variously sized panels of tempera-on-canvas. The Anadarko Post Office was previously also the site of the Kiowa Indian Agency of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The 16 panels were designed by Stephen Mopope, one of the original Kiowa Five artists. They depict the Kiowa people and their culture and life style. Commissioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in June 1936, this was the largest mural commission ever awarded to a Southern Plains Indian artist. Oscar Jacobson, who was in charge of WPA projects for Oklahoma, commissioned Mopope, assisted by “Kiowa Five” associates James Auchiah and Spencer Asah, to undertake the task of painting 16 murals in the newly constructed post office in Anadarko, Oklahoma.

Inspired by the qualities of Plains hide painting and ledger art, the Kiowa Five created a new style of painting that portrayed scenes of Kiowa life and stories from oral history, which is characterized by solid color fields, minimal backgrounds and a flat perspective. The large mural “Kiowas Moving Camp” depict the Kiowas preparing to move south for the winter.

The mural in Anadarko is one of several across the country that were commissioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide jobs for artists, while also illustrating some of the different cultures across America.

USPS art director Antonio Alcala designed the Post Office Murals forever stamps, which are offset-printed by USPS contractor Ashton Potter USA, with a print run of 30 million stamps (3 million panes of 10). Alcala also designed the 2017 WPA Posters stamps. The Postal Service will offer two pictorial first-day cancels for the new stamp set. Both the black cancel and the digital color postmark prominently feature the name of the stamp issue — Post Office Murals — and include a sketched mountain landscape within the letter “O” of “Office.”

Source: www.usps.com