Robert Indiana: A Love Story 

June 1, 2025

Jill Ahlberg Yohe, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

Robert Indiana’s Love sculptures are one of the most recognizable and beloved works of contemporary art. Starting in June, one will be on permanent display in the outdoor sculpture space at the Cafesjian Art Trust Museum. The monumental sculpture and its base stands 8 feet tall and 6 feet wide, perfect for you and your and your bestie to take a selfie and share the love.

Iconic Love sculptures can be found all over the world, from Singapore to Scottsdale and now in Shoreview, Minnesota. Robert Indiana created several series of these sculptures from 1966–2002 in several sizes and colors. What is special about the CAT’s Love sculpture? It happens to be the only one in this color combination currently on view for the public; all others are in private hands. Only twelve Love sculptures in warm gold and ultramarine blue were ever produced, and now you can experience one for yourself.

Indiana’s Love series was so beloved that many people copied the artist’s work. Perhaps if Indiana had known that his work would become viral—found on mugs, keychains, and more than 300 million stamps—he would have copyrighted it. But Robert Indiana was not an artist interested in wasting time on vengeful retribution: he chose love because he believed in it.

Robert Clark was born in 1928 in Indiana, the state that he later adopted as his last name. Indiana spent much of his childhood moving around the state where he absorbed the visual language of signs and business logos, including the early-style red and green Phillips Oil signs of his father’s employer (this color combination would later appear in his Love sculptures and paintings). After many years of art training in his home state, Indiana moved to New York City’s Coenties Slip, a hot spot for artists in the 1950s and 1960s. There, he befriended a group of artists also working in minimalism, including Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, Cy Twombly, and Jack Youngerman.

Indiana called himself an “artists of signs” and spent a career merging text with image in a way that aimed for clarity over frivolity, a nod to his Midwestern upbringing. Steeped in American literature and poetry, Indiana included text from writers like Walt Whitman, Gertrude Stein, Tennessee Williams, and others who used words with precision and play. As a young gay man in America, he also felt a kinship with these writers. He used art to express love and empathy, justice and civil rights.

Wanting to be “an artist’s artist and a people’s artist” Indiana never shied away from his most famous work and the love his Love has brought to many. In an interview about this series he said “Love is a noun and a verb and so one must decide what my love is. It’s a command, love, and it’s a subject, love. It is a grammar, and it is one of my favorite subjects.”

Robert Indiana, 2022 “Artist” May 15-22, 2025 https://www.robertindiana.com/artist