- Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist and writer known as a pioneer of pop art, minimalism, and feminist art.
2. She was born in Matsumoto, Japan, on March 22, 1929.
3. Kusama endured a difficult childhood, marked by trauma, which led to visual and auditory hallucinations. These experiences deeply shaped her artistic vision and ultimately drove her to leave Japan for a time.
4. In the early 1960s, she moved to New York City, where she became a central figure of the avant-garde scene, exhibiting alongside artists like Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, and George Segal. However, she gained wider attention through her radical “happenings”, in which she painted nude participants with fluorescent polka dots.
5. Throughout her life, Kusama has struggled with mental health challenges, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, and has been hospitalized multiple times. In her later years, she voluntarily admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo, where she has lived ever since, continuing to create art.
6. One of her most famous works is the “Narcissus Garden”, first exhibited at the Venice Biennale—an installation of hundreds of reflective silver spheres that comment on vanity and commercialization.
7. Kusama only had one known romantic relationship, with American artist Joseph Cornell, which was brief and ultimately ended.
8. In addition to her abstract and surrealist paintings, Kusama is also a novelist, poet, and short story writer, known for her surreal literary style.
9. Her work has reached record-breaking prices at auction. In 2008, her painting “White No. 28” (1959) from the Infinity Nets series sold for $5.1 million USD.
10. Today, Kusama’s work is featured in the permanent collections of leading museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, LACMA, Walker Art Center in Minnesota, Phoenix Art Museum, Tate Modern in London, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo.
