The pioneering artist leaves behind a seven-decade career that changed the way we experience contemporary art
Yayoi Kusama, one of the most influential and instantly recognisable artists of our time, has died aged 97. The Japanese artist died in hospital in Tokyo on 14 August, with news of her passing announced today by her studio. She continued to paint until her final days.
Born in Matsumoto, Japan, in 1929, Kusama began making art from a young age before moving to New York in the late 1950s, where she joined the city’s avant-garde scene. Over a career spanning more than seven decades, her work moved across painting, sculpture, installation and performance, developing a visual language that became unmistakably her own.
Her obsessive polka dots, colourful pumpkin sculptures and immersive Infinity Mirror Rooms would go on to become some of contemporary art’s most recognisable works. But Kusama’s influence stretched far beyond those signatures. From her early Infinity Nets to experimental happenings in 1960s New York, she pushed ideas around repetition, infinity and the relationship between the body and its surroundings long before immersive art became the global phenomenon it is today.
Kusama’s career also crossed into fashion and popular culture, with her distinctive visual language appearing through projects and collaborations with names including Louis Vuitton, Issey Miyake, Salvatore Ferragamo, Lancôme and Veuve Clicquot. Major exhibitions of her work drew huge audiences around the world, while an extraordinary late-career resurgence introduced her work to an entirely new generation.
Yayoi Kusama leaves behind a visual world unlike anyone else’s, and a legacy that will continue far beyond the dots.
PHOTO CREDITS: Kim Hansen & © YAYOI KUSAMA
