Nine

Details

ROBERT INDIANA (1928-2018)
Nine
stenciled with the artist's name, inscription, title and date 'INDIANA NYC NINE 1965' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
24 x 24 in. (61 x 61 cm.)
Painted in 1965.

Provenance

Stable Gallery, New York
Galerie Alfred Schmela, Düsseldorf
Helga and Walther Lauffs, Germany, 1968
Their sale; Sotheby's, New York, 20 September 2008, lot 61
Private collection
Galerie Gmurzynska, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Literature

A. Whitney, ed., The Helga and Walther Lauffs Collection, Göttingen, 2009, vol. II, p. 121, no. 119.

Exhibited

Los Angeles, Rolf Nelson Gallery, Robert Indiana, May-June 1965.
Eindhoven, Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Robert Indiana, April-June 1966, n.p. (illustrated).
Museum Haus Lange Krefeld, Robert Indiana: Number Paintings, June-July 1966, n.p. (illustrated).
Krefeld, Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Sammlung Helga und Walther Lauffs - Amerikanische und europäische Kunst der sechziger und siebziger Jahre, November 1983-April 1984, p. 231, cat. no. 170.
Krefeld, Museum Haus Lange, Pow! Werke der Pop Art aus der Sammlung Lauffs, March-August 2002.
Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Robert Indiana: Der Amerikanische Maler der Zeichen, August 2007-January 2008, p. 57, no. 6 (illustrated).
Museum Wiesbaden, Robert Indiana: The American Painter of Signs, January-May 2008, p. 62 and 64 (illustrated).
Saint Petersburg, State Russian Museum, Robert Indiana: To Russia with Love, April-June 2016, pp. 10 and 69 (illustrated).
Locarno, Pinacoteca Comunale Casa Rusca, Robert Indiana, April-August 2017, p. 65 (illustrated).

Conditions of sale

Brought to you by

Michael Jefferson International Senior Specialist, Senior Vice President

mjefferson@christies.com +1 312-608-9023

Lot Essay

"Nine, painted in 1965, was painted when I was experimenting with moving away from the rigid use of stencils. The work was composed gestural, which is evident from the visible pencil marks in the work. This was the point in my career where I was firmly established in the art world and now more free to experiment within the series that I had created up until then. Nine looks at first to be stenciled, but as one spends more time with it the loose outline becomes more apparent reinforcing the importance of the image as well as my own meanings of the number itself. The work is unique compared to most of the other numbers that I had done up til then, its individuality heightened when compared to the sculptural numbers I have fabricated over the last four decades. This Nine is a very different Nine than is executed in aluminum, the hand made qualities enhance some of the ideas of the number itself."
—Robert Indiana

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