1024Swden Tanstromer 2013

Sweden post celebrates Tomas Tranströmer who was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature.

RTomas Tranströmer was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature “because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality”. He has played an important role for poetry in many areas of the world and is one of the few contempo- rary poets who have emphasized the relationship between poetry and music.
Nobel diploma with Tranströmer’s poetry, Schubert’s music and nature from the archipelago
When artist John Stenborg received the as- signment from the Swedish Academy in the fall .of 2011 to illustrate Tomas Tranströmer’s Nobel diploma, he was struck by the prize winner’s close relationship with music. The diploma, which is depicted on one of the two stamps in the Nobel diploma minisheet, includes musical notes from Franz Schubert’s piano sonatas.
But the Nobel diploma does not exclusively focus on the relationship between poetry and music. John Stenborg also includes the archi- pelago where Tomas Tranströmer spent the summers of his youth and which he described in his long poem, Baltics, from 1974.
Baltics was published 20 years after the release of the collection, 17 Poems, one of the 1950s most talked-about debut works. This collection provides a glimpse of Tranströmer’sinterest in music and nature. With his next three poem collections he solidified his position among both readers and literary critics as one of the leading poets of his generation.
Tranströmer was introduced in the USA already in the 1960s by writer Robert Bly, and the two started to write letters to one another. The book, Air Mail, includes 150 of the letters they wrote between 1964 and 1990. Internationally, interest for Tranströmer’s poetry has continuously grown, and today his poems have been translated into more than 60 languages.
Tomas Tranströmer was born in 1931 in Stockholm. He graduated from high school in 1950 and then studied, among other things, psychology and the history of literature at Stockholm University. He worked as a psychologist for many years.
The artist behind the Nobel diploma John Stenborg.
Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, represented at Moderna Museet, exhibitions at Galleri Arono- witsch and Thielska Gallery and chosen by the Swedish Academy to design the Nobeldiploma and commemorativemedals. These are a few of the highlights of John Stenborg’s career as an artist.
The whole thing started in his father’s workshop in Lidingö, where painting, carpentry and other expressions of handicraft existed side- by-side. It was here John Stenborg developed his feel for different materials, which is constantly resurfacing in his work.
“The material creates the pictures. I like to experiment with colours and I spend a lot of time choosing the paper for my assignments. Yes,I am a ‘paper nerd’,” says John Stenborg and digs out sketches for Tomas Tranströmer’s Nobel diploma.
On exclusive paper from the German paper mill, Hahnemühle, he has painted a thick base of blue and white in two inverted layers, heaven and sea, which depicts the atmosphere in Stockholm’s archipelago.
“While the paint was still wet I sprinkled flecks of colour over top, which then dried into the paint. I then rubbed out the rough structure and used a needle to scratch in a light staff and notes from a piano sonata by Schubert, one of the author’sfavorite composers. Inthe blue the lines arewhite, and vice versa.”
Tomas Tranströmer’s Nobel diploma is the fifth that John Stenborg has designed for the Swedish Academy.
“The project is short, intensive and prestigious,” he says.
Source: WOPA
published November 24th, 2013

Technical Details:

Issue Date: 14.11.2013
Designer: Hans Cogne
Printer: Recess and offset
Process: Recess and offset
Colours: 4 Colours
Values: 31.0 x 39.5 mm, 34.0 x 50.5 m