Latter-day Saint Artist Designs Christmas Stamps for U.K.’s Royal Mail

 
 
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By Christine Rappleye, Church News

 
Latter-day Saint artist Jorge Cocco Santángelo’s art has been in 16 museums and in dozens of shows around the world.

Now, his postage-stamp-size creations of the biblical Nativity will be on letters in the United Kingdom.

Cocco, an Argentine native, created six Christmas stamps for the U.K.’s Royal Mail.

There are six designs for the stamps: Joseph leading the donkey that Mary is riding; Mary and baby Jesus; shepherds; a trio of wise men riding camels; angels blowing trumpets; and shepherds visiting Mary and baby Jesus.

 
 
Cocco’s art features post-cubist style, and he combines cubism with sacred or religious images for his “sacrocubism” style.

Cocco worked with Supple, a studio based in Bath, England, to produce the stamps, according to designweek.co.uk. The studio’s officials found Cocco, who will turn 85 in December, through his Instagram account.

“It had exactly the right feel, contemporary but also very respectful of the subject matter,” Jamie Ellul, studio founder, told Design Week. The studio’s instructions for Cocco were to “tell the Nativity story without words — and to create jewellike, colorful stamps that feel very celebratory.”

 
 
One of the museums Cocco’s work has been displayed in is the Church History Museum, in 2018. Twenty-one paintings depicting the life of Jesus Christ were exhibited in “Jorge Cocco Santángelo: Sacred Events from the Life of Christ.”

“I’m not just painting any landscape or anything, so if I’m not inspired by God, I couldn’t be able to do it,” he told the Church News in 2018, in advance of the exhibit. “When I finish a piece of work, I give tribute to God for this gift that I’ve received, because it’s not mine. It was given to me to do this.”