Stepan Erzia (birth surname Nefedov; (1876–1959) was an artist, a master of sculpture, a representative of the Art Nouveau style.
From 1902 to 1906, he studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture under Sergei Volnukhin and Pavel Trubetskoy. From 1906 to 1914, he lived in Italy and France. The master created here the works Melancholy (1908), Prison Chaplain, The Last Night (1909), The Stone Age (1911), and Martha (1912). Participating in international exhibitions in Venice and Milan (1909), the Autumn Salon exhibition in Paris (1912), he received worldwide recognition.
A new stage in the development of Stepan Erzia's art begins after the October Revolution of 1917. In search of material, better working conditions and with a desire to teach the art of sculpture to a new generation, he travelled around the country. He created a number of monumental works: the monument To Liberated Labor, To the Ural Communists, to Karl Marx in Yekaterinburg; to Vladimir Lenin in Batumi (1922); sculptural decoration of the House of the Union of Miners in Baku (1923); works in easel sculpture: The People's Tribune, The Prisoner (1920), Victims of the Revolution of 1905 (1926), and others.
In autumn 1926, Stepan Erzia went to Paris on a business trip to arrange his personal exhibition. In 1927–1950 he lived and worked in Argentina. He brought there 30 of his works with the intention of showing them to the public. The personal exhibition of 1927 was a new phenomenon for Argentine sculpture. Among the works presented at the exhibition there were life-size figures of revolutionary workers with banners, The Shooting, and a nude female figure The Dance, In a Dream, Leda and the Swan, and Eve, as well as monumental and lyrical chamber portraits. Here, for the first time in sculpture, he made use of South American tree species.
In 1951, he came to his homeland, bringing a huge collection of his works (180 sculptures in wood, plaster, bronze, marble — with a total weight of 175 tons).
The postage stamp provides a portrait of Stepan Erzia (Nefedov); the margins of the souvenir sheet feature the sculpture The Female Portrait, 1942 (Mordovian Republican Museum of Fine Arts named after Stepan Erzia).
The composition of the souvenir pack in cover “150th Birth Anniversary of S. Erzya (Nefyodov)” includes:
- postal block №3713 “Russian Academy of Arts series. 150th Birth Anniversary of S. Erzya (Nefyodov) (1876–1959), a sculptor”;
- FDC with cancellation in Moscow “Russian Academy of Arts series. 150th Birth Anniversary of S. Erzya (Nefyodov) (1876–1959), a sculptor”;
- vignette.
| Paper |
Printing method |
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| Chalk surfaced |
Offset + glossy lamination |
480 pcs. |