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The Small Diamond Demuth Five

1963

Images

The Small Diamond Demuth Five, a diamond shaped canvas measuring 51 1/4 by 51 1/4 inches. The painting consists of a white circle against a black ground. Within this circle are three yellow number fives against a red star within a black pentagon.

The Small Diamond Demuth Five

1963

Oil on canvas

51 1/4 × 51 1/4 in. (130.2 × 130.2 cm), diamond

 

Artwork: © Morgan Art Foundation Ltd./Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

The interior of Indiana’s loft at 2 Spring Street, with William Katz, Indiana, and Elizabeth Sverbeyeff. Visible on the rear wall are The Small Diamond Demuth Five (1963), The Electric EAT (1964), Four Sixes (1964), Two (1964), and Gerald Laing’s Four Events in the Experience of an Astronaut (1963). In the left foreground is Indiana's Four (1962) and to the right, an early state of Gem (1962).,  

The interior of Indiana’s loft at 2 Spring Street, with William Katz, Indiana, and Elizabeth Sverbeyeff. Visible on the rear wall are The Small Diamond Demuth Five (1963), The Electric EAT (1964), Four Sixes (1964), Two (1964), and Gerald Laing’s Four Events in the Experience of an Astronaut (1963). In the left foreground is Indiana's Four (1962) and to the right, an early state of Gem (1962).

 

Photo: Hans Namuth. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona © 1991 Hans Namuth Estate

Description

The Small Diamond Demuth Five is the smallest of Indiana’s paintings inspired by Charles Demuth’s painting I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (1928), a symbolic portrait of the poet Williams Carlos Williams. Other works in the series, all from 1963, are The Figure 5, The Demuth Five, The Demuth American Dream No. 5, and The X-5.

The work was first exhibited in 1963 in An American Viewpoint, at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, and was also included in the Guggenheim’s 1965 Word and Image show, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York’s 1966 Art in the Mirror show, curated by the art critic Gene R. Swenson.