Skip to content

The Great LOVE

1966

Images

The Great LOVE, a 120-inch square painting consisting of four identical panels, each with a red letter L and a red tilted letter O over the red letters V and E, against a blue and green ground. The panels are arranged so that the Os are facing outwards, towards a corner of the work, with the two bottom canvases oriented upside down.

The Great LOVE

1966

Oil on canvas

Four panels, overall: 120 × 120 in. (304.8 × 304.8 cm)

Each panel: 60 × 60 in. (152.4 × 152.4 cm)

Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Gift of the Women's Committee (67.23)

 

Photo: Courtesy of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Artwork: © Morgan Art Foundation Ltd./Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

Excerpt from a card Indiana sent to the composer Virgil Thomson in 1967. The Great LOVE (1966) was on display at the Carnegie Museum of Art in the Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, October 27, 1967–January 7, 1968, and was giftted to the museum by the Women's Committee. The painting's mate, LOVE Wall (1966), was on display at the Royal Dublin Society in Rosc '67: The Poetry of Vision, November 13–December 30, 1967,  

Excerpt from a card Indiana sent to the composer Virgil Thomson in 1967. The Great LOVE (1966) was on display at the Carnegie Museum of Art in the Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, October 27, 1967–January 7, 1968, and was giftted to the museum by the Women's Committee. The painting's mate, LOVE Wall (1966), was on display at the Royal Dublin Society in Rosc '67: The Poetry of Vision, November 13–December 30, 1967

 

From the Papers Of Virgil Thompson (MSS 29 And MSS 29a) at the Music Library of Yale University.

Description

The first "LOVE" paintings were red, blue and green because my father worked for Phillips 66 and in those days, in the 30s and 40s, all Phillips stations were red and green; the gas pumps, the uniforms, the oil cans. It was a large Phillips 66 sign against a blue sky which I passed hundreds of times as a boy which determined the colors of the "LOVE" painting.

— Robert Indiana

 

Adrian Dannatt, “Love, Pop, Words and More,” Art Newspaper (February 2003), p. 16.