120 YEARS OF PALERMO CALCIO: A STAMP IS ISSUED FOR THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDATION
The Palermo’s Stamp: The artist Francesco De Grandi signs the drawing. A series of limited edition collectible philatelic products are also available
Palermo, 1 November 2020 – A limited edition stamp to celebrate Palermo‘s 120th anniversary. It is the special initiative that the Rosanero company wanted to carry out, thanks to the collaboration with the Ministry of Economic Development, the State Printing Office, and Mint, and with the Italian Post Office, on November 1st, on the anniversary of its foundation.
The ordinary stamp, belonging to the thematic series “Sport”, contains in a few centimeters the iconic elements of the Rosanero history, elegantly represented in the drawing created especially for the occasion by the artist Francesco De Grandi, son of the unforgettable player and historic coach of the Palermo Ninetto. The protagonists of the design, therefore, are the Renzo Barbera stadium, the eagle and the players: two dancing silhouettes that evoke the rock carvings of the Palermitan caves of the Addaura, to suggest what is most archaic in the idea of competition and celebration of the beauty of the body making the athletic gesture.
“I started from the stadium, the“ Eagles Nest ”, an ellipse that holds the parts of the drawing together by gathering the city around its team. In drawing the players, I remembered the images of the glories of Palermo, players who have marked the history and collective imagination of the team of yesterday and today. Between the two players and the ball stands an eagle, tall and proud. A guiding spirit that watches over the stadium and the city ”. It was a great honor for me to design the stamp for Palermo, a team to which I have been linked all my life and which has marked the history of my family by giving them joys, sorrows, successes, and great emotions ”, said Francesco De Grandi.
Together with the stamp, a series of collectible philatelic products have also been created which are already destined to become real rarities for philately fans and enthusiasts. All products, in limited edition, are collected in a special Folder, in A4 format with 3 panels, containing a stamped and obliterated postcard, a postage stamp, a philatelic card, a personalized envelope, franked and obliterated, and a quatrain of stamps. Also available in the prestigious illustrative bulletin with a detailed description of the stamp and a celebratory text signed by the president of Palermo Dario Mirri.
All these products can be purchased, subject to availability, at post offices with philatelic counters and philatelic spaces throughout Italy (info on filatelia.poste.it), but also online in the same philatelic section of the Poste Italiane website.
On the morning of Sunday 1 November, the philatelic counter of the Palermo Ausonia post office in Via Ausonia opens exceptionally for the first-day cancellation of the stamp issue. On this occasion, it is possible to have the stamp canceled with the special “first-day stamp” which makes the postal value card even more prestigious.
Francesco De Grandi
Francesco De Grandi was born in Palermo in 1968; after studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in his city, in 1994 he moved to Milan, where he will remain there until 2008. From 2009 to 2012 he worked in Shanghai, then he decided to return to Palermo where he found a more suitable place to continue his research. Since 1994 he has participated in collective and personal exhibitions in public spaces, museums, and private galleries in Italy and abroad. Since 2017 he has been a teacher of painting and from 2020 of Artistic Anatomy at the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo.
Narrative, figurative, romantic, and evocative, De Grandi’s painting reaches a maturity immediately readable in the quality of color, sign, and iconographic reinterpretation. A painting that comes to terms with tradition, while a contemporary vibration passes through it, with the subtle taste of mixing, overturning, and ambiguity, is a tribute to the immense human audience that every day, from the mythological tale to the crude current chronicle, inhabits the stage of the world.
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