Robert
Indiana

The Great American LOVE (Love Wall) was sold at the Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction in New York, on November 14th, 2018. It had been previously acquired by the seller from a Christie’s auction in 2005. This four-panel oil painting from 1972 is instantly recognisable for Robert Indiana’s use of bold typographic design, monochrome colour palette and signature Love motif. The word first appeared in the artist’s oeuvre in 1966, and quickly gained him national appeal given its resonance with countercultural movements at the time.

In this characteristic painting, Indiana explores the relationship between colour and the written word in a geometrical composition of white serif letters against a bright blue and lively red background, referencing the colours in the American flag. The artist creates an intriguing visual interplay between positive and negative spaces in the image through the use of primary colour blocks. The Great American LOVE (Love Wall) also draws on Pop Art in its precise and mechanical execution, graphic style and sign-like effect, recalling both Andy Warhol and Ed Ruscha. Indiana erects a timeless monument to the universal concept of love.

Robert Indiana’s Love from 1967 sold at Sotheby’s New York, Contemporary Art Evening Auction on November 14th, 2018. The large-scale, bright blue canvas with four, hard-edged red letters spelling the word “love” is an iconic example of Indiana’s oeuvre, which played a pivotal role in the development of assemblage art and hard-edge painting.

The Love motif first appeared in his works in 1966, and was widely distributed through the United States Postal Service "LOVE" stamp in 1973, instantly popular due to the ongoing hippie movement. Spanning a range of underlying meanings, from the erotic, religious, political and autobiographical, Love’s power lies in its straddling of the simple and the complex.

Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE works – which span paintings, prints and sculptures – have by now become emblematic of American Pop culture. Since the first work appeared on the art scene in 1966, Indiana’s LOVE has taken over the entire world and the global art market. It is therefore no surprise that his 1990 painted aluminium Love Red/Blue sculpture holds the title for the most expensive Indiana work ever sold in US dollars.

The sculpture, part of a series of 3, was unveiled at Christie’s New York on 12 May 2011 on the occasion of their “Post-War and Contemporary Art Featuring Property from an Important Private European Collection Afternoon Session”, and fetched a whopping USD 4,114,500 (almost £3.4 million). Strikingly simple and direct, Indiana described Love Red/Blue as a “verbal-visual act” that explores the relationship between written and visual language.

A pioneer of Pop Art and hard-edge painting, Indiana explores the relationship between text, meaning and colour through this pivotal series. In Love Red/Blue, the letters are coated in shiny red and blue, created in the same scale and dual colour as the famous Love sculpture in New York's 6th Avenue and 55th Street. The word” love” is connected to the artist’s childhood memories at a Christian Science church, where he saw the inscription "God is Love" on the wall. The motif later came to embody the spirit of the 1960s hippie movements alongside other political, religious, erotic and autobiographical connotations.