Robert Indiana
(1928 - 2018)
One of the preeminent figures in American art since the 1960s, Robert Indiana played a central role in the development of assemblage art, hard-edge painting, and Pop art. Indiana, a self proclaimed “American painter of signs,” created a highly original body of work that explores American identity, personal history, and the power of abstraction and language, establishing an important legacy that resonates in the work of many contemporary artists who make the written word a central element of their oeuvre.
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Robert Indiana has made of basic American iconography the most subtle and evocative resonance of color his time has seen. He has used the figure of language and number to echo endlessly the paradigms of human emotions and made LOVE an international sign of transcendent power. He is the most deftly Emersonian of our painters, the consummate signer of our human declaration.
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In addition to being a painter and sculptor, Indiana has created a significant number of prints, among them the Numbers Portfolio (1968), a collaboration with the poet Robert Creeley, as well as many other works of graphic art, including the poster for the opening of the New York State Theater, Lincoln Center (1964), and the poster for the opening exhibition of the Hirshhorn Museum of Art (1974). He designed the stage sets and costumes for the Virgil Thompson and Gertrude Stein opera The Mother of Us All, which was presented in 1967 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and expanded in 1976 for the Santa Fe Opera in honor of the Bicentennial.
