Japanese art icon Yayoi Kusama dies at 97

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, one of the world’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, has died at the age of 97, her representatives announced on Thursday, AFP reports.

The avant-garde artist, known as the “Queen of Polka Dots,” died on August 14. She transformed her hallucinations and traumas into vibrant works, featuring her iconic motifs of dots, nets and infinity throughout a career spanning several decades, CE Report quotes AGERPRES.

“Over an extraordinary life devoted entirely to artistic creation, Yayoi Kusama built a globally acclaimed career as a pioneering avant-garde artist whose creative practice encompassed visual art, performance, fiction and poetry,” her company said.

“She continued to paint until her final days, never putting down her brush, and continued her exploration of eternal love and the immortal soul,” the statement added.

Born in 1929 into a wealthy family, Yayoi Kusama began creating her iconic works at the age of 10.

“One day, after seeing a tablecloth with a red floral pattern on a desk, I noticed the same red floral pattern everywhere — on the ceiling, windows and pillars. It filled the room and covered my body,” she wrote in her autobiography.

Immediately recognizable by her bright red wig and bold polka-dot outfits, she expressed a lifelong struggle with mental illness through her exuberant work.

After studying art in Japan, Kusama moved to the United States in the late 1950s and established herself on New York’s avant-garde art scene.

Despite facing discrimination as a Japanese woman, she became prominent in the 1960s with her bold, large-scale paintings and provocative “happenings,” which combined body painting and polka dots.

She also launched a clothing line, founded a “Church of Self-Obliteration” and proclaimed herself the “High Priestess of Polka Dots” to officiate a same-sex wedding.

Returning to Japan in the 1970s, Kusama voluntarily admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo, where she lived and worked until the end of her long life.

Her pumpkin sculptures, including one located on Naoshima, Japan’s “art island,” as well as her “Infinity Rooms” and immersive installations, attracted huge crowds and sold for millions of dollars.

According to her website, the “visions and hallucinations” she experienced as a child inspired her early drawings based on dots and nets, giving her a unique style from the very beginning.

“She developed an artistic philosophy she called ‘self-obliteration,’ based on simple patterns of obsessive repetition and proliferation,” her website explains.

“I have had the privilege of seeing her paintings and artworks several times. Bold, delicate, magnificent. This world was completely unknown to me. And, in my eyes, she was also a truly touching person. May she rest in peace,” a Japanese internet user wrote on X.

“Could all these icons please stop dying? First Dolly, then Tim Curry and now Yayoi?” another user wrote, referring to American country singer Dolly Parton and actor Tim Curry, who also died this week.

According to her representatives, the artist died at a hospital in Tokyo.

Photo: yayoi-kusama.jp/Wikipedia