Aland poster art

Europa stamp

The theme for the Europa stamp this year is poster art. The Aland contribution is especially interesting through its connection to France, where the modern poster art once began and developed.

Aland stamp based upon a poster

The Aland stamp is based upon a poster, which was created for an international poster competition in Strasbourg 1974. The competition was arranged for an international film festival of human rights by the International Institute of Human Rights", founded by Rend Cassin, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1968.

Freedom of speech and press

Theme for the poster competition was "freedom of speech and press", and the artist Kurt Simons from Aland won the first prize. He also attended the solemn prize ceremony at the international film festival. At the same time this was his first visit to Paris, and while there he could enjoy seeing his poster in many different places around the city. The composition of the poster includes a collage of texts from financial and party political newspaper articles.

Reporters without Borders

As we all know, freedom of expression and press continues to be a burning question and one of the cornerstones of a well working democracy. At the end of last year the international organisation "Reporters without Borders" published for the first time a worldwide press freedom index. The index was drawn up from asking journalists, researchers and legal experts to answer different questions, and Finland was considered to have the best press freedom in the world together with Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands. The other EU countries also scored well. The index is based upon a number of different criteria, for example, state regulated media, censorship and murders of journalists. The two worst ranked countries were North Korea and China.
Issue: Aland, 9 May 2003

More information

Stamps Aland
Postage Stamps 2003