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 colors of the paintings correspond to the colors he associated with individual numbers. Thus Decade: Autoportrait 1960 has a gray palette, gray being the color he associated with the number zero, as seen in the painting Zero (1965) and the sculpture ONE Through ZERO (The Ten Numbers) (1978–2003).
The series provides a portrait of his life in the 1960s, and includes references to important names, places, and events. Decade: Autoportrait 1960 chronicles the year his work was first exhibited in a New York City gallery, in the New Media—New Forms I and New Media—New Forms II shows at the Martha Jackson Gallery. The “ELL” in the painting refers to the artist Ellsworth Kelly, his former partner, who had introduced him to Coenties Slip, where he lived from 1956 until 1965. “Harbour” and “Brooklyn” reference sights visible from his studio on the Slip.
Decade: Autoportrait 1960 was first exhibited in 1977 in the exhibition Robert Indiana, at the University Art Museum, University of Texas at Austin, along with the other works in the 72-inch series. It was also included in the 1998 show Robert Indiana: Rétrospective, 1958–1998 at the Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, Nice, France, and in the 2002 exhibition Robert Indiana at the Shanghai Art Museum.