ONE Through ZERO (The Ten Numbers) is an example of Robert Indiana’s long-held fascination with the power of numbers, a subject which stands as one of his most important iconographic themes. Indiana credited his enduring interest in numbers to the formative experience of moving households multiple times as a child, having lived in twenty-one different homes by the age of seventeen. He emphasized the variety of meanings and associations that numbers can generate, and every number had specific personal resonance for him, related either to events in his own life (such as highway routes and buildings where he lived), or to the cycle of life itself, with the number one representing birth, and the number zero standing for death.
The Numbers were executed in Cor-Ten steel, polychrome aluminum, and stainless steel. The 33 1/4 × 33 1/4 × 17 inch Cor-Ten edition was first exhibited in Found in America: Chamberlain, Flavin, Indiana, at Waddington Custot Galleries, London, May 5–June 30, 2017. It was also included in Love Long: Robert Indiana and Asia, at Asia Society, Hong Kong, February 7–July 15, 2018 and Love & Peace: Robert Indiana Memorial Exhibition, at Contemporary Art Foundation, Tokyo, November 27–December 2, 2018.