Pierre Gandon
Pierre Gandon was a French illustrator and engraver of postage stamps. He was born on 20 January 1899 in L'Haÿ-les-Roses (Val-de-Marne) and died on 23 July 1990. Youth His father Gaston Gandon was himself an engraver at the Institut de gravure of Paris and designed stamps for some countries and two for France (Le Burelé 50 Francs in 1936 and the cathedral of Strasbourg in 1939). Pierre Gandon studied in Paris at the École Estienne, then at the École des Beaux-Arts. He won his first of many prizes in 1921 : the Prix de Rome. Stamp designer Gandon answered an advertisement in a paper and finally obtained the right to design "Femme indigène", his first postage stamp series issued 1941 in the French colony of Dahomey. The same year was issued his first stamp for France : the coat of arms of Reims. In 1941, during the Second World War, with Luigi Corbellini, Gérard Cochet, and others Gandon was one of the painters and sculptors who received the higher rate of 10,000 Francs from the City of Paris to compensate artists and intellectuals for loss of income. Four times he received the Grand Prix de l'Art philatélique during his career