Maya with Doll — Picasso Centenary Stamp 

São Tomé and Príncipe, 1981
Denomination: 20 dobra
Artwork: Pablo Picasso, Maya with Doll, 1938

Issued in 1981 to commemorate the centenary of Pablo Picasso’s birth, this stamp from São Tomé and Príncipe reproduces one of the artist’s most personal subjects: his daughter Maya.

Picasso painted Maya with Doll in 1938, when Maya was just over two years old. She was the daughter of Picasso and Marie-Thérèse Walter, whose relationship with the artist inspired many works during the 1930s.

In the painting, Maya holds a doll in her arms, while a toy horse appears beside her. Rather than portraying the child realistically, Picasso reconstructs her figure through overlapping viewpoints, displaced facial features and exaggerated proportions. The face appears to be seen from more than one angle at once, reflecting Picasso’s continuing exploration of how a person might be represented beyond conventional perspective.

The result gives Maya an unusual combination of childlike and adult qualities. Holding her doll in the manner of a mother carrying a baby, she seems to imitate the adult world through play. Within this intimate family scene, Picasso transforms an ordinary childhood moment into an exploration of perception, identity and the relationship between childhood and adulthood.

The upper-right corner of the stamp carries the emblem associated with the International Year of the Child, reinforcing the theme of childhood. Along the lower margin, the inscription “1881 – Centenário de Pablo Picasso – 1981” identifies the stamp as part of the commemoration of the artist’s hundredth anniversary.

The painting itself later acquired another chapter in its history. In 2007, Maya with Doll was stolen from a residence in Paris together with another Picasso painting. Both works were recovered by French police several months later.

At only a few centimetres in size, the stamp functions almost like a miniature gallery label. It preserves not only an example of Picasso’s distinctive visual language, but also a private moment: an artist observing his young daughter at play.

Through the stamp, a small piece of printed paper becomes an entry point into a painting, a family story, and a wider chapter of twentieth-century art history.