The 2026 Stamp Festival has a new theme dedicated to street art.
Stamp Festival, Street Art
If there is one thing as global and universal as postal mail, it is street art! This wild artistic movement can be found in every city on all five continents, wherever women and men place art freely, systematically, and without permission in urban spaces. This art form is divided into two distinct movements, which appeared at the same time: in the United States, young people in disadvantaged neighborhoods in the 1960s began writing their nicknames—their tag names—with spray paint and markers in the streets, creating a new calligraphy that would first become tagging, then graffiti. Simultaneously, in France, artists such as Gérard Zlotykamien and Ernest Pignon-Ernest were taking over walls with all kinds of artwork: collages, drawings, stencils, chalk, mosaics, and more, claiming a free and unrestricted artistic act: this is street art. More than 60 years later, this major artistic movement of our time has already given prestigious names to art history, such as Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and, closer to home, the mysterious Banksy. But above all, it transforms our cities into open-air art galleries, to the delight of passersby and an ever-growing number of art lovers who are captivated by these unconventional, sometimes politically charged, but always stimulating works! The French postal service, La Poste, entrusted the design of the stamp to Hopare, whose real name is Alexandre Monteiro, born in Paris in 1989. Over the years, he has successfully created a dialogue between graffiti, street art, and contemporary painting. His work unites the rigor of line and the power of emotion. The faces he paints, with their intense and penetrating gazes, question us about what we see of the world and what we choose to look at in it.
