Eternal Hexagon

Robert Indiana 1928

Summary

A yellow circle on a black background, written in red at the top of the circle is 'ETERNAL' and along the bottom 'HEXAGON', the number six is in a yellow hexagon in the centre of the circle. Born Robert Clark, Indiana changed his surname to that of his home state. In 1961 he started making paintings with numbers, stencilled designs and lettering in a hard-edged emblematic style. Inspired by Charles Demuth's painting 'I Saw the Figure Five in Gold', 1928, in which the principle element of the picture was a series of number fives done with a sign-writer's precision, Indiana chose the number six as his special emblematic number and repeated it or made reference to it in many works. From 'Ten Works by Ten Painters', a portfolio of ten screenprints in an edition of 500. Published by the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut. Printed by Sirocco Screen Prints, New Haven, Connecticut, Designed by Ives-Stillman.