Robert Indiana

American, 1928-2018

Robert Indiana occupies a central place in postwar American art for his use of language, sculpture, and graphic form. Born Robert Clark in New Castle, Indiana, he was adopted as an infant and experienced a peripatetic childhood across the Midwest. Following military service and studies at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Edinburgh College of Art, he settled in New York City, where he became part of the influential Coenties Slip circle of artists working along the waterfront in Lower Manhattan.

Indiana emerged in the early 1960s with bold, hard-edged works that merged abstraction with text. He is best known for his iconic LOVE image, first introduced in 1964 as a design for a Museum of Modern Art Christmas card. The motif would become one of the most recognizable symbols of the 20th century, rendered in prints, paintings, and large-scale sculptures installed in cities across the globe. Beyond LOVE, Indiana developed a body of work that included word-based compositions like EAT, HOPE, and DIE, as well as number paintings and public commissions that underscored his interest in American identity, commercial signage, and the power of language.

Throughout his career, Indiana was the subject of major exhibitions and retrospectives, with works entering the permanent collections of institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, and the Smithsonian. Though often grouped with Pop Art, his work stands apart for its formal rigor, social commentary, and engagement with the visual language of American life.