Yayoi Kusama was born in Matsumoto, Japan, to a family of merchants and started to paint at a young age. At the age of 10, she began hallucinating fields of dots that she later brought to life in her creations. At 13, during WW2, Kusama worked in a factory that supplied parachutes for the Japanese army. After the war, she studied Nihonga – a traditional Japanese painting style, at the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts. At the time, she developed an interest in the avant-garde. She began to experiment with abstract natural forms, and in 1952, at the age of 23, she had her first solo exhibition.
Her abusive relationship with her mother and the conservative Japanese culture drove Kusama to leave Japan, and at the age of 28, she moved to the US. She settled in NYC, where her avant-garde works received praise and exhibited among the most known pop-artists of the era, such as Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg.
Kusama became familiar with her obsessive repetition, as can be seen in particular in her Infinity Nets – paintings of thousands of tiny dots that covered a 30 ft-long canvas, with no regard to its edges, as if they are endless. Her work, an implementation of her hallucinations, explored the boundaries of painting and created a hypnotic sensation for the viewer. This idea was reflected in her 1965 installation of Infinity rooms, in which she lined a room with mirrored glass and covered the floor with stuffed phalli painted with red polka dots. During this period, she expressed her sexual anxiety by covering objects, such as chairs and shoes, with phallic protrusions.
In 1966, Kusama participated for the first time in the Venice Biennale, in which she sold individuals mirrored spheres that she installed on the lawn until the organizers made her stop. In the following years, her artworks were public performances and protests against the Vietnam War. They often involved nudity, such as the unauthorized performance at the sculpture garden of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, where she painted polka dots on the naked participants. In 1968, she founded the Kusama Fashion Company Ltd, designing and selling avant-garde clothing. In that same year, she opened nude painting studios as well as a gay social club.
Although Kusama gained fame for her art, she did not get paid for most of it, unlike the many male artists who copied her work. Her mental health declined, and she tried to commit suicide several times, been in and out of hospitals. In 1973, at the age of 44, she returned to Japan and began writing and publishing surrealistic poems, novels, and short stories. In 1977, by her own choice, she moved into a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo. She opened a studio near the hospital and continued to make art.
In 1989, Kusama returned to the public eye when the Center for International Contemporary Arts in NYC presented a retrospective of her work. In the following decades, similar shows took place in various cities around the world, including Oxford, Venice, Los Angeles, Paris, and Tokyo.
Throughout her life, she created hundreds of artwork from different mediums. She inspired people and challenged them not only because of her original and innovative body of work but also because of her honesty and openness about her mental health and how art can save lives as it saved hers.
In her 90s, Kusama is still working, creating new pieces and revisiting her previous works. She exhibits in the biggest art institutions, and usually, the tickets are sold out in advance.
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