Contemporary art

Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist whose endless polka dots and giant black-spotted pumpkins have become one of the most recognisable visual languages in contemporary art. The pumpkin is her personal emblem and a kind of self-portrait, a motif she has returned to since the 1940s.

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born 1929 · Japanese painter, sculptor and installation artist

Kusama is one of the most commercially successful living artists and a pioneer of immersive art: her Infinity Rooms and pumpkin sculptures draw enormous queues at museums worldwide.

Creator story

Surprising fact

Kusama says she first encountered a pumpkin as a child on her family's seed-harvesting field and has seen it ever since as a warm, good-natured companion — pumpkins became a source of comfort and a way of coping with the hallucinations she has experienced since childhood.

Source: Wikipedia / Wikimedia

Has worked with the pumpkin motif since the 1940s — her personal emblem and a form of self-portraiture.
Has voluntarily lived at a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo since 1977, continuing to work at her nearby studio.
One of the most valuable living artists: her works have repeatedly set auction records among women artists.