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Avant-garde Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, whose works based on the obsessive repetition of motifs made her world-famous, has passed away at the age of 97.
Throughout a prolific career that included a long stay in the United States, Kusama transformed her hallucinations and traumas into an original body of work marked by the infinite reiteration of iconic motifs such as polka dots.
"With profound sadness, we announce the passing of Yayoi Kusama at a Tokyo hospital on August 14, 2026, at the age of 97," her company announced in a statement.
"Throughout an extraordinary life entirely dedicated to artistic creation, Kusama developed an acclaimed international career as an avant-garde artist, whose work included visual art, performance, narrative, and poetry," the firm added.
"She continued to paint until her final days, never putting down her brush, and continued her exploration of eternal love and the perpetual soul," it added.
The artist was born in 1929 and was the youngest daughter of a wealthy family. She began producing her characteristic dot and net patterns at the age of 10.
"One day, after seeing a tablecloth decorated with a red flower pattern on a table, I started observing the same red flower pattern on the ceiling, the windows, and the columns. It filled the whole room, and even covered my body," the artist recounted in her autobiography, evoking that initial inspiration.
Easily recognizable by her striking red wig and polka-dot outfits, her exuberant work was the expression of a long struggle against mental illness.
- Voluntary hospitalization in a psychiatric facility -
Yayoi Kusama studied Fine Arts in Japan and in the late 1950s moved to the United States, where she established herself as one of the figures of the New York avant-garde.
Despite the discrimination she faced as a Japanese woman in a country still marked by World War II, she managed to gain recognition for her work and her provocative 'happenings' in the 1960s, where she experimented with body painting and her perennial polka dot motif.
She also launched a clothing brand, founded a "Church of Self-Destruction," and proclaimed herself the "High Priestess of Polka Dots" to officiate a wedding between two men.
Upon returning to Japan in the 1970s, Yayoi Kusama voluntarily decided to check into a psychiatric center in Tokyo, where she lived and worked until the end of her long life.
Her pumpkin sculptures—one of which is exhibited in Naoshima, Japan's "art island"—and her immersive installations attracted crowds and sold for millions of dollars.
According to her website, it was the "visions and hallucinations" of her childhood that inspired the first drawings, based on dots and nets, that would definitively mark a highly peculiar and recognizable style.
At the museum dedicated to her work in Tokyo, 50-year-old Ai Kono, who came for a visit with her 10-year-old daughter, tells AFP that she heard the news of Yayoi Kusama's passing on the train.
"She lived a long and fruitful life. But the news shocked me. I came because I wanted to show my daughter her famous polka dots and her use of color," explains Ai Kono. "As a woman, it must be said that she was a persevering person."
Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, praised the late artist as a "true visionary who showed us the power of limitless imagination."
"Yayoi Kusama's creativity moved the art world forward and left us a brighter, more vibrant world," the tech executive added on his X account.
[Publicidad]