Robert Clark (Newcastle, 13 September 1928 - Vinalhaven 19 May 2018) changes his surname to a stage name, Indiana, borrowed from his home state, and is the protagonist of American Pop Art. The artist attended the College of Art in Edinburgh and then moved to New York in 1954, where he joined the Pop Art movement. Indiana founded his artistic research on the signs of advertising and on a graphic style that makes extensive use of color . The layering of different signs and colors allows the visual ideas of the artist to be transmitted intensely.
Indiana inserts in its works characteristic images of contemporary society with the aim of creating a commercial art mixed with existentialism, which gradually evolve together towards what Indiana calls "Sculptural Poems". He uses daring and simple images, in particular short numbers and words such as "Eat", "Hug" and "Love". It strongly supports the use of the written word in art and language, intended as a social message. The coexistence between abstract and real moment finds its manifestation in the use of numbers and the passage between word and image, only in this way his works are bold, iconic and apparently immediate. Indiana carries out a work of strength and undoubted visual power that immediately strikes the viewer; he is able to transform the ordinary into works of art. In his works there are references to the dialectic between life and death Eat / Die (1962), literary references, The Melville Triptych (1961) and to the iconography of the beloved city New York, of which for example it represents The Brooklyn Bridge (1964) .
The external coexistence between abstraction and realism is the reaction to a possibility to show personal realities in art. One of Indiana's most famous works is Love commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA in 1964 for a Christmas greeting card. Indiana then turns it into a three-dimensional architectural work in polychrome aluminum. This sculpture has become not only the symbol of the artist's work, but also of the pacifist movement of the sixties. Love sculpture can be found in major cities worldwide, from Seventh Avenue in New York to the gardens of the Museum of Art in New Orleans to one of Taipei's main squares in Taiwan.
In 1963 he immersed himself in the world of choreography as a set designer and costume designer, since 1964 he also participated as a dancer and actor. From the sixties he began exhibiting in the most influential American and European contemporary art museums: in 1961 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in 1963 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and in 1964 at the Tate Gallery in London.
In 1977 Indiana paints the spectacular Milwaukee Arena, while in 1964 he collaborates with Andy Warhol for the creation of a film entitled Eat, which consists of a single 45-minute shot during which Robert Indiana continuously eats a mushroom. Since 1978 he has retired to private life on the remote island of Vinalhaven, Maine.
The artist also creates a series of works such as the hymn and cry for peace, the Peace Paintings, created after the attacks on the Twin Towers of 11 September 2001. These works were exhibited in New York a few years later, in 2004.
On September 2015 to honor Pope Francis on the occasion of his visit to the United States, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Association for Public Art are pleased to present Robert Indiana’s monumental sculpture AMOR (1998) on the Museum’s East Terrace. The colorful, six-foot-high sculpture will overlook the celebration of the papal mass on Sunday, September 27, which culminates the World Meeting of Families 2015, the world’s largest Catholic gathering of families.
His works can also be viewed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco, the Tate Modern in London, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, the Shanghai Art Museum in Shanghai.
In addition to be the official Robert Indiana's rappresentative gallery in Italy, in 2009 the Galleria d'Arte Maggiore g.a.m. curated an exhibition dedicated to Robert Indiana entitled "From Love to Amor" in which his monumental works were installed on the streets and mountains of Cortina d'Ampezzo.