Robert Indiana
Imperial Love, 1966/2006

Artist
Robert Indiana

Title
Imperial Love

Year of creation
1966/2006

Technology and dimensions
Corten steel, 244 x 488 x 152 cm (without base)

Year of acquisition
2016

Donor
Morgan Art Foundation

Robert Indiana (1928-2018) is considered one of the main representatives of US Pop Art. “Imperial Love” was conceived in 1966 and realized as a sculpture in 2006. Here, Indiana doubles the lettering that is one of his most famous pictorial creations, the combination of the capital letters L and O over V and E arranged in a square, into a horizontal diptych. The one-word poem, as the artist calls his creation, became a picture puzzle that is as much an abstract graphic gesture as it is a complex carrier of meaning. The concise typographic form of LOVE was created in 1964. Indiana had graphically reduced the motif to an extreme extent and compressed it to the essentials, following the design principles of advertising. But it is only in the sculpture “Imperial Love” that the mirrored word image unfolds its full potential; it can be walked around and read from the back.

In the mid-1960s, Indiana encountered a sense of social optimism with LOVE. Its motif combined aspects of art, consumerism, religion, politics and sexuality and became a logo known worldwide. This was also evident in numerous variations in art and popular culture, including through the Canadian artist collective General Idea. This also contributed to Robert Indiana's LOVE becoming one of the most famous works in art history and part of the collective visual memory.

The almost five meter wide work made of Corten steel is the first sculptural work by Indiana in the holdings of the Berlin State Museums. Before it is given its long-term location on the sculpture terrace of the reopened Neue Nationalgalerie, “Imperial Love” will remain at Hamburger Bahnhof.