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 the opening 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