page_title: Robert Indiana
section_title: LOVE
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Indiana / Work / LOVE
caption_attribution_description: English: United States Postal Service 8c LOVE Stamp issued in 1973, designed by Robert Indiana
context_page_description: Robert Indiana was an American artist associated with the pop art movement. His "LOVE" print, first created for the Museum of Modern Art's Christmas card in 1965, was the basis for his 1970 Love sculpture and the widely distributed 1973 United States Postal Service "LOVE" stamp. He created works in media including paper and Cor-ten steel.
context_section_description: Indiana's best known image is the word Love in upper-case letters, arranged in a square with a tilted letter "O". The iconography first appeared in a series of poems originally written in 1958, in which Indiana stacked LO and VE on top of one another, then in paintings like 4-STAR LOVE (1961) and "Love is God" (1964). 
  The art historian Susan Elizabeth Ryan wrote that “LOVE” had in 1964 a "more explicit four-letter word — beginning with F, and with a second letter, a U, intriguingly tilted to the right." Indiana and Kelly had been on a rocky relationship and  Indiana had been working on word paintings. She adds "The two men were in the habit of exchanging postcard-size sketches, with Mr. Kelly laying down fields of color and Mr. Indiana adding large words atop the abstractions."
  The red/green/blue image was then created for a Christmas card for the Museum of Modern Art in 1964. In an interview Robert Indiana said "It was the most profitable Christmas card the museum ever published."
  Indiana said he was inspired to use these colors because his dad used to work at a Phillips 66 gas station which colors were green and red.  Robert Indiana described the original colors as "the red and green of that sign against the blue Hoosier sky". Still it is believed the colors were inspired also by the paintings Red Blue Green (1963) of Ellsworth Kelly, his former partner. 
  Indiana said, "Ellsworth Kelly introduced me to Hard-Edge and was a great influence on my work, and is responsible for my being here".
  The first serigraph/silk screen of "Love" was printed as part of an exhibition poster for Stable Gallery in 1966.  The print was bold green and blue, with a red advertisement of the gallery exhibition at the bottom<Love and the American Dream: the art of Robert Indiana>.  The only few signed copies of this print removed the red portion, was signed on the bottom reverse by Indiana, which was common with his early work, and given as gifts to the workers who set up the gallery exhibition. (2005 email correspondence with one of the actual workers who set up the show, and owner of one of the signed prints).  
  In 1973, it was put on an eight-cent U.S. Postal Service postage stamp, the first of their regular series of "love stamps".
caption: 1973 LOVE stamp
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