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Yayoi Kusama – a life in pictures

The Japanese avant-garde artist, who was known for her giant polka dot artworks and mirrored infinity room installations, has died aged 97

Yayoi Kusama, Japanese artist who became a global superstar, dies aged 97

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, pictured in Hong Kong in 2012. Photograph: Jose Fuste RAGA/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images

Wed 26 Aug 2026 23.59 EDT

Last modified on Thu 27 Aug 2026 12.10 EDT

Portrait of Yayoi Kusama with bunch of large flowers, circa 1939 — Yayoi Kusama was born in Matsumoto, Japan, in 1929. She had an unhappy childhood due to her abusive mother and philandering father. Her wealthy family managed plant nurseries and Kusama drew the flowers, despite her mother’s frequent attempts to stop her. As a child, she began experiencing hallucinations, in which the flowers would talk to her. To cope, she drew what she saw.Photograph: Yayoi Kusama
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Artist Yayoi Kusama next to her ‘Dot Car’ (1965) — Kusama pictured with her Dot Car (1965) in Scheveningen, the Netherlands. Kusama dedicated herself to being a professional artist in her early 20s, against the wishes of her family – one contemporary Japanese newspaper report says she was producing 70 works with paint and ink every day.Photograph: Harrie Verstappen/Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
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Kusama and US artist Louis Abolafia (second from right) walk with a large crowd before a building with arches — Kusama escaped a stagnant postwar Japan in 1957 with 1m yen stitched into her clothes and eventually moved to New York. Kusama and US artist Louis Abolafia (second from right) were known for staging ‘happenings’ in Central Park in the 1960s, including a ‘spiritual wedding’ ceremony where they stripped off their clothes to announce Abolafia’s mayoral campaign.Photograph: New York Daily News/NY Daily News/Getty Images
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A portrait of Kusama at Yayoi Kusama Infinity Mirror Rooms exhibition at the Tate Modern, London in 2021. — A portrait of Kusama at Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms exhibition at the Tate Modern, London, in 2021. Her mental health deteriorated further, with hallucinations, panic attacks and suicide attempts in the 1970s. She returned to Japan and checked herself into a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo in 1977 that offered art therapy. This provided Kusama with the stability needed to pursue her projects without distraction. Photograph: Nathaniel Noir/Alamy
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Kusama pictured inside The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away at the David Zwirner gallery in New York in 2013. she has a red bob with a fringe and is standing in front of a field of light — Interest in Kusama waned until the 1990s when she shifted towards installations that built on her 1965 work Infinity Mirror Room: Phalli’s Field. Half a century later, her immersive mirror rooms connected with audiences in the Instagram age, attracting millions of art lovers around the world. She is pictured inside The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away at the David Zwirner gallery in New York in 2013. Photograph: Mike Segar/Reuters
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A red and white polka dot ribbon wraps a circular concrete building — Kusama wrapped Washington DC’s Hirshhorn Museum in a giant polka dot ribbon for her exhibition in 2017. Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images
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Yayoi Kusama pictured in her Tokyo studio in 2017 with her colourful paintings in the background — Kusama pictured in her Tokyo studio in 2017. She lived in a psychiatric hospital for decades, and would work in her studio across the road six days a week. In 2018 she told the Guardian: ‘When I arrive at my studio in the morning, I put on my work clothes and start to paint straight away, and I work right up until dinner time. I don’t rest. I am an insomniac. Even now, if an idea comes to me in the middle of the night, I pick up my sketchbook and draw.’Photograph: Toru Hanai/Reuters
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Kusama at the opening ceremony of the Yayoi Kusama Museum in Tokyo, Japan — Kusama at the opening ceremony of the Yayoi Kusama Museum in Tokyo, Japan. The five-storey museum opened in 2017 and attracted huge global interest. The museum was forced to restrict the number of visitors to just 50 people admitted four times a day for 90 minutes each.Photograph: The Asahi Shimbun/Getty Images
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One of Kusama’s famous yellow and black pumpkins on display outdoors in Paris, France in 2019 — One of Kusama’s famous pumpkins on display in Paris, France in 2019. The artist had been obsessed with pumpkins ever since she was a child. ‘I have always found them to be such tender things to touch and so wonderfully humorous, humble and appealing,’ she said in 2019. Photograph: Pierre Suu/Getty Images
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People visit Kusama’s Ascension of Polka Dots on Trees at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx in 2021 — People visit Kusama’s Ascension of Polka Dots on the Trees at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx in 2021. Kusama was fixated on repetition, resulting in a career dominated by dots, nets and lines, and rooms filled with hundreds of pumpkins, lights and mirrors.Photograph: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
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A visitor takes photos of a painting while visiting the Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now exhibition at M+ Museum in 2022, Hong Kong. — In 2022, Hong Kong’s M+ Museum hosted a huge retrospective of the artist’s works called Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now, featuring 200 paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations. At the time it was the largest comprehensive survey of her work in Asia outside Japan.Photograph: China News Service/Getty Images
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In 2023, Louis Vuitton’s flagship store in Paris was taken over with polka dots and a giant inflatable mannequin of the Japanese artist, complete with distinctive red bob — In 2023, Louis Vuitton’s flagship store in Paris was taken over with polka dots and a giant inflatable mannequin of the Japanese artist, complete with distinctive red bob.Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images
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Later in the artist’s career, her kaleidoscopic infinity rooms often drew the biggest crowds, especially once her popularity reached Instagram. This Infinity Mirrored Room was part of a major exhibition at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne in 2026. — Later in the artist’s career, her kaleidoscopic infinity rooms often drew the biggest crowds, especially once her popularity reached Instagram. This Infinity Mirror Room was part of a major exhibition at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne in 2026.Photograph: Martin Meissner/AP
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Giant polka dot flowers installed beside Cologne Cathedral — Part of that exhibition included her artwork Flowers that speak all about my heart given to the sky, which was installed beside Cologne Cathedral. Photograph: Ina Fassbender/AFP/Getty Images
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Kusama began painting her My Eternal Soul series in 2009, in which she took her polka dot iconography to the canvas — Kusama began painting her My Eternal Soul series in 2009, in which she took her polka dot iconography to the canvas. Here she is working on one of those paintings in Germany in 2026. The artist died in a Tokyo hospital on 14 August.Photograph: Sonja Blom/Alamy
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