Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama was born in Matsumoto City, Nagano, Japan on March 22, 1929 to a prominent family. A profound, if not traumatic, experience as a young girl of feeling obliterated in a field of flowers would shape her use of infinity and repetition in her later work. Kusama showed a talent for art from a young age, one that her parents did not foster. Her mother’s desire for Kusama to marry into a prominent family did not align with Kusama’s own vision for herself as an artist. Her parent’s unhappy marriage, punctuated by her father’s prolific cheating, impacted young Kusama. Her mother would often send her to spy on her father during his dalliances, which she believes led to her supreme aversion to sex in later life.

By the 1950s, Kusama’s watercolors were getting noticed in Japan but she wanted more. In search of what to do next, Kusama came across the work of American artist Georgia O’Keefe and wrote to her, enclosing some of her watercolors for her review and advice. O’Keefe responded and encouraged in not only her art, but for her to come to America. In 1957, Kusama moved to New York and diligently pursued showing her work. Her soft sculptures, use of repetition, and mirrored infinity rooms of this era “inspired” the works of top male artists in the New York art scene who went on to have great successes with these ideas, leaving Kusama to fight for her place at the table. After years of struggle and the often negative publicity for her infamous Happenings, Kusama returned to Japan and largely stopped creating art for years. After checking herself into a mental hospital with an art therapy program in the late 1970s, Kusama returned to art and today is one of the most beloved, popular, and prolific artists alive. Still living in the mental hospital, Kusama walks the two blocks to her studio every day and creates work after work. From expansive infinity rooms, to paintings, to collaborations with top designers, Kusama is in high demand for her unique vision, honed over decades of creating and innovation.