Yayoi Kusama, a Japanese avant-garde artist globally acclaimed for her polka dot imagery, pumpkin sculptures and immersive mirror-based installations, died of multiple organ failure at a Tokyo hospital on Aug. 14, a foundation set up to support her said Thursday. She was 97.
With a career that spanned more than 60 years, Kusama was a trailblazer in contemporary art. She was also one of the most popular and commercially successful artists, with her shows drawing big crowds around the world. Her paintings sold at auction for millions of dollars apiece.
Born in Nagano Prefecture in central Japan, Kusama began experiencing hallucinations at a young age. She later depicted them in her works to overcome the fear they generated.
After studying painting at an art school in Kyoto, she moved to the United States in 1957. Eventually settling in New York, she produced large paintings and soft sculptures while also holding body-painting festivals and fashion shows, some of them to protest against the Vietnam War or to campaign on social issues.
She returned to Japan in 1973 before participating in the Venice Biennale in 1993 to represent Japan. She held an exhibition in 1998 at the Museum of Modern Art.
Her popular "Infinity Mirror Rooms," an installation series enabling visitors to experience endless reflections of themselves, have attracted global popularity on Instagram in recent years.
Other works that have drawn acclaim in the age of social media include "Pumpkin," an installation on Naoshima, known as an art island in the Seto Inland Sea, and "Phantom Flowers" at the Matsumoto City Museum of Art.
Kusama collaborated with Louis Vuitton in 2012, with the brand installing a humanoid robot of the artist at its store in Tokyo in 2023.
In 2017, Kusama opened her own museum dedicated to her works in a neighborhood close to her home in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward.
Kusama, often pictured wearing a brightly colored wig and flashy clothes with her signature polka dot pattern, was included in TIME magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2016.
Known for her intense focus as an artist, she said in an interview at her studio with Kyodo News in 2017, "When I am drawing, I get so absorbed that I often forget to have lunch."
Kusama, who continued to work during the interview, said she sometimes got out of bed in the middle of the night to create art.
She was awarded the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government in 2003 and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, by the Japanese government in 2006.
