Robert Indiana

Robert Indiana (born as Robert Clark, New Castle, Indiana, September 13, 1928) is an American artist associated with the Pop Art movement.

Indiana moved to New York City in 1954 and joined the pop art movement, using distinctive imagery drawing on commercial art approaches blended with existentialism, that gradually moved toward what Indiana calls sculptural poems. Indiana's work often consists of bold, simple, iconic images, especially numbers and short words like EAT, HUG, and LOVE. He is also known for painting the unique basketball court formerly used by the Milwaukee Bucks in that city's U.S. Cellular Arena, with a large M shape taking up each half of the court. His sculpture in the lobby of Taipei 101, called 1-0 (2002, aluminum), uses multicoloured numbers to suggest the conduct of world trade and the patterns of human life.

Robert Indiana suggested in 1962 after viewing a selection of Lowell Nesbitt's abstract paintings, drawings and prints that he had been producing from 1955-1962 that he attempt to make a conversion from abstraction to realism and that he attempt to produce floral paintings, a suggestion that Nesbitt took him up on. The artist would latter become internationally famous for producing works of realism and flower paintings as a result of Indiana's advice.

Indiana has been a theatrical set and costume designer, such as the 1976 production by the Santa Fe Opera of Virgil Thomson's The Mother of Us All, based on the life of suffragist Susan B. Anthony. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Indiana produced a series of Peace Paintings, which were exhibited in New York in 2004.

Indiana has lived as a resident in the island town of Vinalhaven, Maine since 1978. He appeared in Andy Warhol's film Eat (1964), which is a single 45-minute shot of Indiana eating a mushroom.