Japanese avant garde artist Yayoi Kusama, whose polka dot paintings and immersive Infinity Mirror Rooms made her one of contemporary art’s most recognizable figures, has died at 97.
Born in Japan in 1929, Kusama experienced vivid hallucinations from childhood, including visions of dots, lights and flowers. Those experiences later became central to an artistic language built around repetition and infinity.
At 27, she moved to the United States after becoming frustrated with postwar Japanese society.
In New York, she developed her Infinity Nets paintings and experimented across multiple mediums while becoming part of the city’s avant garde scene.
During the 1960s, Kusama staged provocative performances and participated in anti-war activities. Her work also challenged conventions surrounding gender and sexuality.
Although she knew artists including Andy Warhol and Donald Judd, the Western art establishment largely treated her as an outsider.
Kusama returned to Japan in the early 1970s and later voluntarily entered a psychiatric hospital, where she continued creating art from a nearby studio. Her international reputation surged again from the late 1980s onward.
Her Infinity Mirror Rooms, pumpkin sculptures and polka-dot works eventually became major attractions worldwide. In 2022, Untitled (Nets) sold for nearly $10.5 million, an auction record for Kusama.
Her work generated $190.5 million in auction sales in 2023 alone, while her Tokyo museum, opened in 2017, helped further establish her artistic legacy. Kusama continued making art while openly discussing her psychological struggles.
Her career ultimately connected personal experiences with installations and visual motifs that reached audiences far beyond the traditional contemporary-art world.
Sources: Reuters; CNN.
