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STABLE GALLERY 33 EAST 74TH STREET, NEW YORK, 21, N.Y. RE 7-0100

POWER AND SPLENDOR OF THE NUMBERS

Robert Indiana's Paintings in the Gallery Schmela

Human lives are marked by numbers. Birth dates, date of death, arrival, possession, account, auto licenses - and telephone numbers, adress numbers. The computer prints everything entirely in numerals, Pop artist, Robert Indiana, born in 1928, In New Castle un the state of Indiana, USA, and who lives in New York, fascinated with alphabet letters and numbers for several years, has created the greatest homage to the number with ten paintings - which are to be seen at present at Gallery Schmela. From 0 to 9, he has elevated the numerals of the Arabic system, each in a work of magical monumentality. The type face is the "Heavy Clarendon", In which each figure appears as a massive emblem. Indiana has placed each in a circle. Under them, the number in words in repeated.

The colors, laid on completely symetrically-flat, convey the mood that the artist feels in each. The 0 stands neutral grey in grey, the 9 is gloomy-disastrous: black and yellow; the 6 is aggresive: green and red and blue, the 1 is self assertive and brazen in green and blue. One must see the paintings in order to comprehend what can astonish in the execution of a theme which at first glance appears so simple: the power of the expression and how the colors and the complimentary colors work, the 6 bewitches the eye and the 8 soothes in its symmetry.

No visitor to the gallery will leave unimpressed by the pregnance of these numbers. They make one aware of what numerals mean, of the power they exert and of their absolute splendor. Indiana has with them, within his work, fulfilled perhaps the most brilliant intention of Pop Art, to show how much our lives depends on things, which become fetishes.

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