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The Word

Happy 74th birthday, Robert Indiana!

Indiana, a founder of the Pop Art movement, made today's print, which became an icon of the hippie generation. Indiana described LOVE as "my starkest, my simplest painting." He made both prints and aluminum sculptures using this concept. He translated LOVE into Hebrew (Ahava) for a sculpture at Jerusalem's Israel Museum, and planned at one point to translate it into several other languages.

"When I decided to use the written word in my work, it was Picasso's example (and that of Juan Gris and Braque, too) that gave me a basis for the decision.... I think I've pushed that concept—the viability of the word—as an art form," Indiana claimed.

Source: Barbaralee Diamonstein. "Caro, de Kooning, Indiana, Liechtenstein, Motherwell and Nevelson on Picasso's Influence," Art News 73:4 (Apr. 1974), p. 45.

Pictured: Robert Indiana, born 1928, Love, 1973, serigraph on paper, 30 x 30 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of David Lloyd Kreeger.