“I became consumed with the subject of [Marsden] Hartley when I found out that I rented a building [on Vinalhaven] that had been on the property where he had lived in 1938. This coincidence inspired me to make the Hartley Elegies (1989-1994), a pictorial homage to him, which I began in 1985 to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the death of Hartley’s German officer friend, Karl von Freyburg, which originally inspired him to paint many paintings in grief over the loss.” — Robert Indiana
Excerpt from “Robert Indiana,” interview by Francine Koslow Miller, Tema Celeste, January/February 2003.
