Yayoi Kusama: 1929-2026

Over a career spanning seven decades, Yayoi Kusama is arguably the most important Asian artist of the century and one of the most influential women ever to shape the global art world.

Kusama died in Tokyo on 14 August 2026, aged 97. Fittingly for an artist whose work was consumed by ideas of infinity, repetition and eternity, she continued painting until her final days.

I will keep on making my art until the day I die. And even after I die, my spirit will keep creating new art.

Born in Matsumoto, Japan, in 1929, Kusama experienced vivid hallucinations from childhood. Patterns appeared to multiply around her, covering walls, ceilings and even her own body. Rather than retreating from these visions, she transformed them into art.

Dots, nets and repetition became a way of exploring infinity and what she called “self-obliteration”, the dissolution of the individual into something endless. These ideas would eventually produce some of the most recognisable imagery in contemporary art: dotted pumpkins, Infinity Nets and Infinity Mirror Rooms.

Kusama left Japan for America in 1957, settling in New York. Money was scarce and recognition difficult, particularly for a Japanese woman working within a predominantly male art world. Yet the work she produced was radical.

Her Infinity Net paintings gave way to sculptures in which ordinary furniture and domestic objects were covered with phallic forms. Kusama’s complex relationship with sexuality became material for work that could be humorous, provocative and deliberately unsettling.

By the 1960s, her Happenings brought together nudity, body painting, performance and political protest, including demonstrations against the Vietnam War. Painting, sculpture, installation, fashion and performance were all fair game.

In 1965, Kusama created her first mirrored environment, Infinity Mirror Room – Phalli’s Field. It was a breakthrough. Mirrors allowed the repetition already present in her paintings and sculptures to appear to continue forever. More importantly, the viewer was no longer simply looking at a Kusama: they were standing inside one.

This accessibility became central to her later success. The Infinity Mirror Rooms are open, immediate and immersive. Decades before immersive exhibitions became commonplace, Kusama had already understood their extraordinary power.

Kusama was remarkably open about her mental health and its relationship to her work. After returning permanently to Japan in 1973, she voluntarily entered a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo in 1977, maintaining a studio nearby and continuing to work prolifically.

Rather than diminishing her career, this period coincided with one of art history’s most extraordinary rediscoveries. Her return to international prominence gathered momentum during the late 1980s and reached a defining moment in 1993, when Kusama represented Japan at the Venice Biennale. At its centre was Mirror Room (Pumpkin), bringing together two motifs that would become synonymous with her work: mirrors and pumpkins.

What followed was an extraordinary late-career ascent. Major exhibitions and retrospectives at institutions including MoMA, Tate Modern and Centre Pompidou, alongside the opening of her own dedicated museum in Tokyo, introduced Kusama to successive generations of visitors around the world. Her Infinity Mirror Rooms, meanwhile, became cultural phenomena in their own right.

Kusama’s achievement feels even more extraordinary because recognition was neither immediate nor straightforward. She spent decades pushing against barriers of gender, nationality and mental health before becoming one of the most recognisable artists on the planet.

Her paintings, prints and sculptures developed an equally formidable following among collectors. Her works on canvas, in particular, have commanded more than $10 million at auction, reflecting a market that grew alongside her extraordinary cultural reach.

Kusama remained immensely prolific throughout her life, continuing to paint until her final days.

Yayoi Kusama made infinity visible. Fittingly, her legacy feels without end.