The exhibition in April 1982 (APS 6) and the present publication are the first tangible results of more than two years of fascinating correspondence and organization work, following our decision to create a systematic and at least in the documentation, a complete collection of artists stamps in Central Europe.

The idea came up after Cavellini’s successful Budapest exhibition which attracted and provoked many Hungarian artists to participation. We thought then of organizing a large scale international exhibition, i. e. as far as that was possible under our present circumstances. We wanted the whole world to appear in one definite place at one definite time. From this the project of asking for commemorating stamps evolved almost by itself and, subsequently, the idea of creating a collection of artists stamps. We mailed an enormous number of invitations, attempting to get in touch with everyone somehow connected with stamps. A lot of people helped us by publishing the news of our project, multiplying the invitation text, and supplying useful information. Here we wish to express our gratefulness to Hanns Sohm for having enriched our collection with very valuable, older stamps.

We hope that this publication will, beside briefly surveying the history of artists’ stamps, give a taste of that marvellous picture that has opened before our eyes looking at the day by day arriving projects for memorial stamps forming, with a disregard to any kind of geographical, political, or cultural boundaries, several meaningful series.

Our thanks are due to all participants.

J. & G. Galántai