Political and social themes can be found throughout Indiana’s oeuvre, with individual works created as a reaction to specific political events, both domestic and international. U-2 commemorates the capture of U.S. Air Force captain Francis Gary Powers, who was shot down over Soviet air space on May 1, 1960, while flying a U-2 spy plane. The incident occured fifteen days before a planned U.S.-Soviet summit meeting in Paris and lead to a rapid deterioration of relations between the two countries.
