One of the most recognisable and commercially successful figures in contemporary art, has died aged 97.
Her studio and foundation announced today that she died in a Tokyo hospital on the 14th of August
“It is with profound sorrow that the passing of Yayoi Kusama at a hospital in Tokyo on August 14, 2026, at the age of 97.
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.
She continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her brush, and continued exploration of forever love and eternal soul. We will carry forward Kusama’s wishes and, through art, continue to bring hope and strength for the future to people around the world. Yayoi Kusama Inc.”
– Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc.
Kusama was known worldwide for her polka-dot paintings, pumpkin sculptures and Infinity Mirror Rooms that surround visitors with repeating lights, colour and reflections. The rooms became blockbuster attractions and a staple of museum selfies.
Kusama was born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan, into a troubled household. As a child, she experienced vivid hallucinations of dots and patterns that later became the signature of her art. During World War II, she worked in a military factory sewing parachutes. In the late 1950s she moved to the United States, first to Seattle and then New York, where she became part of the city’s avant-garde scene. She produced paintings, sculptures, films, writing and performance art, including public “happenings” in which she painted dots on naked bodies. She also campaigned on gender equality, gay rights and against the Vietnam War. Despite friendships with artists such as Andy Warhol, she remained an outsider in the New York art world.
She returned to Japan in the early 1970s and, a few years later, checked herself into a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo, where she lived voluntarily for the rest of her life. She kept working from the hospital and a nearby studio. International interest in her work revived from the late 1980s. She represented Japan at the Venice Biennale in 1993, a museum dedicated to her opened in Tokyo in 2017, and her pumpkins and Infinity Rooms became landmarks and tourist draws. She also collaborated with Louis Vuitton.
Australians saw her work in major exhibitions, including at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art in 2009, Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art in 2018 and the National Gallery of Victoria in 2024.
In a statement, Yayoi Kusama Inc and Yayoi Kusama Studio said she devoted her life to art across painting, performance, fiction and poetry. “She continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her brush,” the statement said.
