Robert Indiana’s Decade: Autoportrait paintings are a series of autobiographical portraits that he began in 1971. The works, which the artist considered a throwback to his American Dream series, consist of three groups of ten paintings in different sizes: 24-, 48-, and 72-inches. The 24- and 48-inch works made their debut in Robert Indiana: New Paintings and Sculpture, held at the Galerie Denise René, New York, November 22–December 30, 1972.
The series provides a portrait of his life in the 1960s, and includes references to important names, places, and events. Decade: Autoportrait 1967 references the two areas of New York where Indiana lived during the 1960s. “Slip” references Coenties Slip, where Indiana lived until 1965. “Skid Row” is a reference to the Bowery, a street and neighborhood in Lower Manhattan which from the 1940s through the 1970s was considered New York City’s Skid Row. Indiana moved to the area, into a former luggage factory on the corner of Spring and Bowery Streets, in 1965. In April of 1967 Indiana and his partner Bill Katz presented "Bartok on the Bowery,” a concert by the Orford String Quartet at the artist’s studio.
The colors of the Decade: Autoportrait series correspond to the colors he associated with individual numbers. Thus Decade: Autoportrait 1967 incorporates blue and orange, the colors he associated with the number seven, as seen in the painting Seven (1964–65) and the sculpture ONE Through ZERO (The Ten Numbers) (1978–2003).