On his first visit back to Chicago and the Art Institute since his graduation there in 1953, when invited to serve on a jury for the yearly regional show, Robert Indiana looked up his former etching instructor Vera Berdich and, with her permission, did his first and only etching in that same number of years. Using a copper plate found in a scrap pile with a defaced commercial image and, instead of turning it over and using the clean side, he proceeded to reetch [sic] and print it in intaglio. A few proofs were pulled there and some more artist’s proofs were made in the Pratt Graphic Studio in New York before the plate was forwarded to Paris and printed by G. Leblanc to the number of 100, all returned and signed, and included in the portfolio “The International Avant-Garde 5,” edited by Billy Klüver and published by Galleria Schwarz in Milan. The 20 artists included D’Arcangelo, Dine, Durkee, Grooms, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Rosenquist, Segal, and Warhol.
— Robert Indiana
Excerpt from Richard Raymond Alasko, Michael Patrick O'Connor, and Robert Indiana, Robert Indiana: Graphics (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University, 1969), p. 37.