Yayoi Kusama

Japan

She was born in 1929 in Matsumoto in the Japanese Alps.

💡 Did you know? Her home town of Matsumoto still shows her work prominently in its city art museum: giant dotted tulips greet you outside.

polka dots

She covered canvases, sculptures, entire rooms and her own clothes in dots.

💡 Did you know? Kusama spoke of "obliterating" herself and the world in dots: she called it self-obliteration.

Infinity Mirror Rooms

Mirrored rooms in which lights and dots reflect into endlessness: the first dates back to 1965.

💡 Did you know? Outside some museums, visitors queued for hours: often for barely a minute alone inside the room.

hallucinations

As a child she saw visions in which dots and nets spread across everything.

💡 Did you know? She described her art as a way of living with those visions: painting, she said, had saved her life.

in a psychiatric hospital

She set up her studio just across the street and worked there almost every day.

💡 Did you know? She kept working until her final days: she died on 14 August 2026, aged 97.

New York

Her vast Infinity Net paintings and provocative happenings made her name.

💡 Did you know? Some of her ideas resurfaced soon after in the work of more famous colleagues: critics drew parallels all the way to Andy Warhol.

pumpkin

Her dotted yellow pumpkin on the pier of the art island Naoshima became a place of pilgrimage.

💡 Did you know? In 2021 a typhoon swept the famous pumpkin into the sea; it was recovered and replaced with a new version.

Louis Vuitton

In 2012 and again in 2023, with dots on bags, dresses and shop windows around the globe.

💡 Did you know? In 2023 a strikingly lifelike Kusama robot waved from a shop window, while a giant figure of the artist leaned over the Paris flagship store.

97

She died on 14 August 2026 in Tokyo.

💡 Did you know? In 1993 she had been the first artist to fill Japan's pavilion at the Venice Biennale single-handedly.

Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama (1929 to 2026) turned dots and mirror rooms into world art and herself into an art figure.

💡 Did you know? The bright red bob and polka-dot dresses were a fixed part of her persona.