This Sunday would have been Pop artist Robert Indiana’s 97th birthday. To celebrate we are having a look at the artist’s signature, a word which appeared across paintings, prints, sculptures and posters in bold typography and brilliant colour, a word that shaped Pop art forever: LOVE.
One of his Series places LOVE in the context of a Garden. He transforms the word into a riot of colour and pattern, each work in this series ‘The Garden of Love’ takes its title from a flower. And currently at Shapero we have ‘Tulip’ and ‘Zinnia’. The works are not botanical studies, rather a playful marriage of the flower with this iconic motif that Indiana employs over many of his works.
He takes inspiration from each flower’s distinctive colours and translates them into his own graphic vocabulary. In ‘Tulip’, vivid colour becomes part of the composition’s visual rhythm whilst ‘Zinnia’ similarly draws upon the flower’s exuberant palette. The result is something neither flower nor LOVE, but a wonderful combination of the two. Indiana takes something found in nature and filters it through the bold instantly recognisable language of Pop. Turning the familiar into something entirely his own.
