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John Held Jr.
Active in international alternative art since 1975, when he first began
researching rubber stamps and their use by an international array of artists
engaged in the field of Mail Art, John Held Jr. has participated in and
curated exhibitions, written for publication, performed, and lectured on
such subjects as the post-war avant-garde, Mail Art, Fluxus, artist publications,
artist postage stamps, rubber stamp art, artist networking, and other forms
of contemporary alternative art.
Held graduated with a Masters of Information Science from Syracuse University.
He was a Fine Arts Librarian at the Dallas Public Library from 1981 to 1995.
He is listed in Who's Who in American Art, and his gallery and archive of
contemporary art, Modern Realism, has been annually documented in Art in
America's Guide to Museums and Galleries since 1982. In 2000, Helds' collection
of Mail Art was accepted for inclusion in the Archives of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution. He currently resides in San Francisco, California.
Helds' writings on Mail Art, rubber stamp art, performance and other marginal
and avant-garde art forms have appeared in such diverse magazines as Art
and Artists, Rubberstampmadness, Factsheet Five, Artpapers, and Public Library
Quarterly, as well as other Mail Art, alternative and underground magazines
throughout the world. In 1991, Scarecrow Press published his book, Mail
Art: An Annotated Bibliography. He is a contributor to the Grove Dictionary
of Art published by MacMillan in 1994. His latest book, Rubber Stamp Art,
was published by AAA Edizione (Italy) in 1999.
His exhibitions of perforated artist postage stamp sheets have been presented
in such venues as Argentina, Belgium, Chile, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Japan,
Yugoslavia, and throughout the United States.
In 1988, Held was a member of a group of Japanese, Italian, French, and
American artists that performed in Hiroshima, Kyoto, and Iida, Japan. He
exhibited, performed and lectured in Belgium, Italy, Yugoslavia and England
in 1989. In September 1990, Held was invited by the Tartu Artists Society
to participate in the International Mail Art Symposium in the USSR . An
exhibit and lecture took place at the Tartu University Library, and performances
were held in both Estonia and St. Petersburg, Russia. In December 1991,
the artist continued his journey for international cultural understanding
by traveling to Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay for a series of exhibitions
and performances. In December 1992, Held delivered a talk on mail art at
the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England, and spoke to the staff
of the National Art Library on documenting the contemporary avant-garde.
Held was invited by the city of Itami, Japan, to participated in a series
of performances in connection with Global Forum, an international ecology
conference, in April and May 1993. His 1994 Eastern European Performance
Tour took him to the Czech Republic, Hungary and Yugoslavia and Croatia,
in one month. Held organized an exhibition of mail art for the National
Museum of Fine Art, Havana, Cuba, for 1995. From 1995-1997, Held was the
curator of The Stamp Art Gallery, showing both historical and contemporary
mail art, rubber stamp art and artist postage stamps. In 1999, Held curated
the exhibition, Before Punk and Zines: Bay Area Dada, at Printed Matter
in New York City. In 2000, The John Held, Jr. Papers were accepted into
the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. He traveled to Minden,
Germany, in September 2001, to perform in the "Time of Change Festival."
In April 2001, Held gave a talk and performance at theng of a Mail
Art exhibition in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. In 2001, Held attended the
"Peace Island" exhibiton in Jeju Island, South Korea. In December
2002, he will be exhibiting artistamps and rubberstamp art at the Chekhov
Museum, Moscow, Russia.
Correspondence dates: Late 1970s - present
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