Monday, September 30, 2013

Robert Indiana (1928-2028)

Pop artist Robert Indiana turns eighty-five this month. His career in art is the subject of a retrospective exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Entitled "Robert Indiana: Beyond LOVE," the exhibit opened on September 26, 2013, and runs until January 5, 2014. Mr. Indiana created his iconic painting, called and spelling out the word LOVE, in 1966, the sesquicentennial year of his home state. He is known for his bold and brightly-colored pop-art imagery.

Robert Indiana was born Robert Clark on September 13, 1928, in New Castle, Indiana. He attended Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis (1942-1946) and served in the air force for three years before studying at the Art Institute of Chicago (1949-1953), the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine (summer 1953), and Edinburgh University and Edinburgh College of Art (1953-1954). He returned to the United States in 1954 and settled in New York City. Since 1978, he has been a resident of Vinalhaven, Maine.

Links:
Robert Indiana's own website: Robert Indiana

Robert Indiana created an iconic image simply by stacking and tilting letters in his painting of 1966, entitled LOVE. In 1973, the U.S. Postal Service issued an 8-cent LOVE stamp. Happy eighty-fifth birthday to Robert Indiana and happy fortieth anniversary to the LOVE stamp.

Update (December 6, 2019): Robert Indiana died on May 19, 2018, in Vinalhaven, Maine, at age eighty-nine.

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

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