SPOLETO 1978 ROBERT INDIANA POSTER

This poster by artist Robert Indiana for the 1978 Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC is so colorful and so much fun! You get in a festival mood just looking at it. The globe suspended in the blue field looks a bit like planet Earth, with the State of South Carolina in white showing prominently and with Charleston's location marked by the blue star. Aside from the globe, most of the poster is a cacophony of colorful letters floating around in space that spell out "Spoleto Festival," along with a few stars. "USA 1978" appears in stencil form, and underneath that it says "Charleston. "

While acknowledged as a prominent figure in the Pop Art movement, Indiana thought of himself as an American painter of signs, as his bold, graphic style was inspired by billboards and other commercial signs.  He frequently incorporated short words from signs into his paintings, prints and sculptures. This poster is a wonderful example of how he worked his craft.

Robert Indiana (1928-2018), born Robert Clark, grew up in Indiana in a family that moved frequently from town to town in Indiana.  He took “Indiana” as his last name in recognition of this legacy.  He of course is best known for his “LOVE” series of prints and sculptures, first produced in the 1960s. His two-row graphic of the word, with its tilted "O," is one of the most recognizable works of modern art in the world. The original LOVE sculpture is located at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, but his work is represented in the collections of numerous major museums and institutions, and versions of his outdoor LOVE sculptures are seen in cities worldwide.

Spoleto Festival is a performing arts festival in Charleston South Carolina founded in 1977 as the US counterpart to the Festival dei Due Mondi (The Festival of Two Worlds) in Spoleto, Italy.  This annual 17 day late-spring event showcases performances of opera, dance, theater, classical music and jazz.

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