Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama (1929-2026) holds a very special place in Contemporary art history. A trailblazing figure in 20th and 21st century art, her eccentric yet brilliant mind gave rise to a tremendous body of work, much of it informed by hallucinations she first experienced in childhood. Best known for covering entire paintings and sculptures in her joyous polka dots, her immersive ‘Infinity Mirror Rooms’, which envelop viewers in Kusama’s captivating visual world, offer an experience unlike anything else.

Born in Matsumoto City, Japan, in 1929, Kusama grappled with trauma and mental health issues from a young age, experiences she channelled into her art throughout her life. Feeling constricted in her motherland, she moved to New York City in 1957, marking a watershed moment in Kusama’s life and career. A pioneering figure in the city’s avant-garde art scene in the 1960s, she began creating her iconic ‘Infinity Nets’ series - one of the artist’s most significant bodies of work - shortly after her arrival in New York.

Alongside her iconic polka dots, Kusama is also synonymous with pumpkins. She first began drawing them as a child in Japan during World War II, when her family owned a storehouse of pumpkins that became a source of sustenance and comfort. Having first experienced hallucinations in childhood, Kusama came to regard pumpkins as a source of solace from her anxieties and obsessions. Her pumpkin imagery became so famous that it is now an indelible symbol of popular culture.

Through the passing decades and shifting zeitgeists, Kusama pioneered an artistic oeuvre filled with colour and light, often drawn from darker personal experiences. One of the world’s highest-selling female artists, the availability of her work at different price points, together with her celebrated collaboration with Louis Vuitton - the brand’s most extensive collaboration with a fine artist to date - helped generate a massive global market for her art and cement her enduring influence across contemporary art, fashion and popular culture.