Avant-garde Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, celebrated globally for her immersive Infinity Mirror Rooms and signature polka-dot installations, died August 14 at a hospital in Tokyo at age 97, according to her studio and company announcements.
Japanese contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama, whose unmistakable polka dots transformed paintings, sculptures, and museum installations across the globe, died at the age of 97. Her passing on August 14 at a Tokyo hospital was confirmed by the Yayoi Kusama Studio and Yayoi Kusama Inc.
Yayoi Kusama Studio and Matsumoto City Beginnings
Kusama’s death closes a prolific, decades-spanning career that carried her from rural Japan through the vibrant, avant-garde circles of 1950s and ’60s New York City and ultimately to worldwide acclaim. Throughout her life, she maintained an unrelenting creative output, creating immersive worlds of reflected light and pattern. Born in central Japan’s Matsumoto City, Kusama suffered from visions and hallucinations that inspired her first polka-dot and net-themed drawings, developing at a young age the unique style for which she would become known, her official biography states.
Studio Tributes and Lasting Artistic Legacy in Tokyo
In a statement announcing her death, her representatives emphasized that she remained dedicated to her craft until the end of her life without ever setting aside her brush. Her studio highlighted her lifelong exploration of eternal themes, noting that her work sought to communicate deep emotional resonance to audiences worldwide.
“She continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her brush, and continued exploration of forever love and eternal soul.”
Yayoi Kusama Studio
The studio added a commitment to carry forward Kusama’s wishes and, through art, continue to bring hope and strength for the future to people around the world.
Institutions across the art world offered immediate tributes. The National Art Center, Tokyo, was among the first to offer its condolences, saying it was deeply saddened
to learn of Kusama’s death. The center, which is Japan’s largest arts exhibition center, called Kusama a pioneering artist
who has had a profound impact
on the art world, offering its sincere prayers for her peaceful repose and honoring her enduring legacy. Kusama was widely exhibited around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Museum Ludwig in Germany.
New York City Exhibitions and Repetitive Motifs
From Matsumoto City Outskirts to New York Avant-Garde
At 28 years of age, Kusama moved to the United States in 1957, and began exhibiting her work a year later, while living in New York City. She lived in the United States until 1973, during which time she gained rapid success and international acclaim. Repetitive motifs were her trademark, in various shapes, resembling netting, swirls or worms, but most often dots, dancing proudly on her canvases, or as sparkling balls or dots of light in her installations, in all their vibrant psychedelic glory.
Infinity Mirror Rooms and the Order of Culture
Global Acclaim and the Evolution of the Infinity Mirror Rooms
After returning to her native Japan, she resumed writing, specifically fiction and poetry, and created sculptures and her famous Infinity Mirror Room
series that has gone on to inspire numerous artists, whose influence can be seen throughout the world. Kusama was called pop, avant-garde, feminist, just to name some of the categories, and she pursued her vision of art over a lifetime, insisting she drew the way she saw the world: covered with spots, part of the hallucinations she said she had from childhood. She was in and out of psychiatric institution for decades, although her sickness did not hold her back as she was one of the first Japanese women to go to New York to pursue her art, in 1957.
Her cultural reach eventually extended far beyond traditional galleries. In her later years, as the times caught up with her art, she enjoyed fame. She signed on with fashion brands like Louis Vuitton as well as other licensed products like teacups, T-shirts and key chains with her illustrations, including replicas of her likeness that were used in show windows and other marketing. In 2008, Christie’s auctioned her work for $5.8 million. In 2016, she won the most prestigious award Japan gives its artists, the Order of Culture. Upon receiving the award, she told reporters she was more determined than ever to pursue her art, stressing that the sincerity and devotion she had demonstrated in her personal life were crucial parts of her artistic legacy. She stated she was still fighting to the death for her art and giving all she had so that many people would continue to be interested in her art even after she was dead.
“Polka dots are fabulous.”
Yayoi Kusama, in a 2012 interview with The Associated Press
Appearing in her signature orange bob wig and polka dot attire during that interview, she said she wanted to create a thousand paintings, maybe two thousand paintings, as many as she could draw in her childlike but matter-of-fact tone, vowing to keep painting until she died.
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