Tokyo, Japan – Japan‘s Yayoi Kusama, one of the world’s most celebrated contemporary artists, has died aged 97, her company said on Thursday, triggering tributes from around the world.
The “polka dot queen” channeled hallucinations and battles with mental health into vibrant art featuring her trademark dots, nets, and infinity motifs over a career spanning decades and continents.
“Throughout an extraordinary lifetime devoted entirely to artistic creation, Kusama pursued an internationally acclaimed career as a pioneering avant-garde artist whose creative practice encompassed visual art, performance, fiction, and poetry,” a statement said, announcing her death on August 14.
“She continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her brush, and continued exploration of forever love and eternal soul,” it said.
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Born in 1929 to a wealthy and conservative family, Kusama began producing her unique signature art aged 10.
“One day, after seeing a tablecloth with a red flower pattern on a desk, I saw the same red flower pattern all over the ceiling, windows and pillars. It filled the room, and covered my body,” she wrote in her autobiography.
After studying art in Japan, Kusama moved to the US in the late 1950s, and – helped by Georgia O’Keeffe – made a splash in New York’s avant-garde scene.
Despite facing discrimination as a Japanese woman, she won fame for bold, big paintings and provocative 1960s “happenings” featuring body painting and polka dots.
She also launched a fashion line, established a “Church of Self-Obliteration,” and styled herself the “High Priestess of Polka Dots” to officiate at a gay wedding.
Returning to Japan in the 1970s, Kusama checked herself into a Tokyo psychiatric hospital, where she lived – and worked – for the rest of her life.
