Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama - Biography 

Born in 1929 in the Japanese city of Matsumoto, Yayoi Kusama is a contemporary artist famous and influential around the world.

Her passion for art began at age of 10 when she started drawing figures she saw from hallucinations, which are now internationally famous and celebrated. Yet her mother was not supportive of her art. Kusama began to draw her iconic dots faster and faster because she was in constant fear of her mother taking and ripping apart her work. The physical abuse Kusama endured during her childhood still influences the production of her art.

Although her mother did not approve of Kusuma’s dreams of becoming an artist, she still attended art school where she studied Nihonga painting. This style is when one uses techniques and materials that are of the Japanese tradition. Kusama felt trapped in the strictly Japanese style so she began to try other genres. She wanted to put her personal sensations and interpretations of the world around her on canvas. 

One day Yaoyoi came across a book with paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe, a famous American avant-garde painter. Kusama was captured by her art and decided to write to O’Keeffe to ask for advice on how to find her way as a painter. 

Only a few days later Georgia O’Keefe responded, pushing Yayoi to move to the United States as it would be the best place to free her art. In 1958 Yayoi followed O’Keefe’s advice and moved to New York. The city was in full swing and Pop Art was just making its way into art galleries. From this moment on, Kusama abandoned the formal rigour of Japanese art to make way for new expressiveness. Yayoi Kusama’s artwork transforms into an expression of her own state of mind to show her fears and anxieties.

In the 1960s Yayoi Kusama met Andy Warhol, who also became the Japanese artist’s first buyer. Her early works were mainly large-scale monochrome paintings, thanks to which she quickly gained attention.

In 1977 Kusama returned to Japan for good. She decided to move into a psychiatric hospital in Seiwa where she writes poetry, novels, and paints daily. 

Her work most recent work aims to tell the story of infinity through sculptures. For the 1993 Venice Biennale, Kusama created a hall of mirrors filled with small pumpkins, which have since come to represent her alter ego. 

Her work is exhibited in numerous museums around the world, from the Tate Modern in London to the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. Her fame has also reached the general public thanks to her collaboration with British musician Peter Gabriel in 1994 for the video of the song Lovetown, in which Kusama’s world of polka dots meets and animates Gabriel’s music.

Today, at over 90 years old, Kusama is the richest artist in the world and is well known for her many collaborations with major brands. In 2012, she collaborated with Louis Vuitton, which was later renewed in 2022. They created numerous garments with the iconic polka dots in all sizes and colours. 

"I am determined to create a Kusama world that no one has ever seen before." - Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama - Artwork and Style

Yayoi Kusama’s work is primarily based on the conceptual art style as well as various influences from styles such as minimalism, surrealism, art brut, pop art and abstract expressionism. All of these are united by the use of her symbolic polka dots.

Polka dots are omnipresent in Kusama’s artistic production: from sculptures to the bodies of models transformed into living art. Polka dots were also the protagonists of her first performance in 1966, on 14th street in New York City. The same year, Kusama showed up uninvited to the Venice Biennale and began throwing over a thousand mirrored spheres into the city’s canals for her work entitled Narcissus Garden. 

One of the most popular works of Yayoi Kusama and described by many as a masterpiece is her Infinity Room. They are immersive installations of kaleidoscopic universes using light and colour, with the intention of transporting the viewed into another world. In these installations, the artist leaves the two-dimensional surface to bring her art into an environment of reflection through kaleidoscopic surfaces. In this room, the human body is fragmented and then reproduced an infinite number of times. 

Yayoi Kusama - Pumpkin Obsession

In Yayoi Kusama’s art, Pumpkins are one of the most recurring subjects. The artist’s passion for pumpkins was born during her childhood when she would walk through the fields of her grandfather’s farm and find herself admiring the pumpkins. The vegetable struck her for its structural simplicity and she composed her first watercolours with it. The artist captures not only the grace of the vegetable but also what she describes as their “generous unpretentiousness” and “solid spiritual balance”.

YAYOI KUSAMA: WORKS FOR SALE WITH PRICES AND VALUE AT DEODATO ARTE

For those interested in the artist, you can find Yayoi Kusama's works for sale on our website.

If interested in finding out about Yayoi Kusama's prices, value or which works will be on display at Deodato Arte Contemporary Art Gallery please do not hesitate to contact us by sending an e-mail to [email protected].