This stamp issue honors the contributions of Latino art to American Culture. It features images that showcase four popular dances: meringue, cha-cha-cha, salsa and mambo. Four Latino artists present their personal interpretations of the dances.
For the Merengue stamp, Rafael Lopez uses a warm palette of colors, from red and orange to yellow and lime green, all suggesting the tropical sunlight and vegetation of the Caribbean islands.
In creating his design for the Cha-Cha-Cha stamp, Edel Rodriguez effectively juxtaposes the warmth of the dancers' suntanned skin and the sinuous line formed by their bodies with the coolness suggested by their white clothing and waving palm fronds.
Capturing motion in the billowing skirts of a salsa dancer, José Ortega uses palm leaves to refer to salsa's tropical roots in the Caribbean, and a cityscape to suggest its New York City birthplace.
Sergio Baradat evokes elegance in his design for the Mambo stamp. Here, the red of a woman's dress offsets the nighttime purple and gold hues of the ambient light, while a drum-shaped moon seems to join the orchestra's saxophone and timbales.
