LOVE
1966
Oil on canvas
24 × 24 in. (61 × 61 cm)
Photo: Courtesy of Sotheby's, New York; Artwork: © Morgan Art Foundation Ltd./Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Installation view of Robert Indiana: Letters, Words and Numbers, C&M Arts, New York, February 13–March 22, 2003, featuring a 72-inch version of Indiana's red/blue LOVE (1967). To its left is Bar (1960–62), and to its right are Eat (1962, cast 1991), The Small Diamond Demuth Five (1963), and Hole (1960–62)
Most of my canvases are square. The circle is square. The circle lives most comfortably within a square. And this is painted by LOVE. The LOVE came into being because when one is going to adorn a canvas with a four-letter word it has to be square. This is its ultimate use of space—no space and no borders.
— Robert Indiana
N. J. Stanley, "Robert Indiana at Sixty: Twenty-One Hoosier Homes and Other Symbols." Arts Indiana 11 (February 1989), p. 11.