Indiana painted a series of small Yield Brother canvases in the 1960s which he dedicated and gifted to friends. Yield Brother Lowell was painted for the artist Lowell B. Nesbitt. Indiana is credited with urging Nesbitt, who in the early 1960s worked in abstraction, to explore realism, which helped pave the way for what became his signature realist works.
The painting is an early example of Indiana incorporating the tilted O of his LOVE image into other works.