Yayoi Kusama is an internationally renowned artist with works in diverse media that confront the psyche, space, light, color, and society. Her net and polka dot pattern paintings stem from visual and auditory hallucinations that she began experiencing as a young child, which later developed into large paintings, sculptures, installation works, performances, and happenings while spending time amidst the New York avant garde from 1957 to 1973. Many of her works revolve around her personal philosophy of self-obliteration, manifesting in obsessive repetitions and the recurrence of single motifs, and offer a glimpse into her universe. 

 

Kusama was born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan, and currently lives and works in Tokyo. She has exhibited extensively in major museums across the globe, participating in the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993. Major traveling retrospectives were held in the U.S and Japan in 1998-1999, in the U.S and Europe in  2011, in Latin America in 2013-14, and in Scandinavia in 2015-16, among others. The Yayoi Kusama Museum opened in 2017.