Robert Indiana

Acquired directly from Edition Domberger by the present owner, 2014

Sheehan 114-123

“The Decades portfolio gives me an excuse to do ten prints. I like ten, and since a decade is a very conspicuous measure of time, you know –it's the 60s, the 50s, the 30s, the 20s, it’s just a natural division.” - Indiana in conversation with Poppy Gandler Orchier, in Robert Indiana Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné 1951-1991 

Robert Indiana explored the concept of the chronological decade throughout his career. His first exploration of the theme was his Decade portfolio of 1971, in which he reproduced one of his paintings from each year of the 1960s through a set of ten screenprints (see Lot 47). 

In 1980, Indiana returned to this ten-year format with the publication of Decade: Autoportraits, Vinalhaven Suite, wherein he created a print for each year of the 1970s. The title of the suite refers to Vinalhaven, a small island off the coast of Maine that Indiana moved to in 1978 after living and working in New York City for more than twenty years. Indiana’s Vinalhaven Suite offers a personal reflection on his past ten years, giving the work a more intimate quality than his earlier Decades suite, perhaps due to the quiet, solitary setting in which it was created. In both Decade suites, the unique ten-year format acts not only as a clever means of delineating his artistic career but also provides a wistful commentary on the perpetual passing of time.