Brief biography
Yayoi Kusama (1929–2026) is a legendary Japanese avant-garde artist, born on 22 March 1929 in the city of Matsumoto. Since childhood, she suffered from hallucinations: fields of dots appeared before her eyes, covering the entire space — walls, floor, her own body. A traumatic childhood (she witnessed her father's infidelities, and her mother was against her artistic aspirations) shaped a special view of the world and that very visual language that made her famous.
In the 1950s, Kusama moved to New York, where she created her famous "Infinity Nets" — hypnotic canvases covered with repeating loops and dots. In 1973 she returned to Japan, and in 1977 she voluntarily settled in a psychiatric clinic in Tokyo, where she lived until the end of her life, suffering from obsessive-compulsive neurosis. She said: "I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only thing that helps is creating art."
The philosophy of dots: dissolution of the ego
Through her infinite dots and repeating patterns, Kusama conveyed the feeling of dissolving her own "self" into the infinity of the universe. She called this "self-obliteration" (self-obliteration, or self-destruction) — a concept meaning the loss of boundaries between oneself and the world through the obsessive repetition of a single motif.
"With a single dot, nothing can be achieved. In the universe, there are the sun, the moon, the earth, and hundreds of millions of stars... By covering everything with dots, I symbolically disperse my identity," the artist explained.
Her famous infinity mirror rooms (Infinity Mirror Rooms) immersed the viewer in a space where the boundaries between the body and the universe were erased, creating a sense of belonging to something infinitely larger.
Interesting details
- Pumpkins are another iconic motif. For Kusama, they symbolized stability, comfort, and modesty, reminding her of her childhood in Matsumoto. Her yellow pumpkin on Naoshima Island became a symbol of the entire island.
- The artist did not voluntarily leave the clinic, but every morning she crossed the road to her studio to work.
- In the series "My Eternal Soul" (since 2009) she created more than 800 canvases, exploring her psychic universe.
- Pumpkins often became her self-portraits — the artist saw in them a reflection of her own "homely but warm" nature.
How did her paintings come to be worth millions?
Kusama's path to millions was not instantaneous. In the 1970s, having returned to Japan and settled in the clinic, she was practically forgotten by the Western art world. She was considered a marginal figure or simply "an artist with a mental disorder."
The turning point came in 1980–1990 for two reasons:
1. Reassessment of art history. Feminist art historians and curators began to re-examine the New York avant-garde of the 1960s. It turned out that Kusama had invented many techniques of minimalism, pop art, and performance earlier, than celebrated men like Andy Warhol or Claes Oldenburg (while she often faced her ideas being appropriated).
2. Venice Biennale (1993). Japan entrusted her with representing the country at the main showcase of world art. Her installation with thousands of pumpkins caused a sensation, and she began to be spoken of as a living classic.
A key role in turning Kusama into a financial giant was played by two galleries: the Japanese Ota Fine Arts (working with her for decades) and the New York David Zwirner (one of the most influential galleries of contemporary art in the world), which began representing her in the 2010s.
Why galleries bet on her:
- A unique combination: she had undeniable historical value for museums and at the same time incredible visual appeal for the general public.
- The "Instagrammable art" phenomenon: her "Infinity Mirror Rooms" became the perfect product for the social media era. Queues for tickets to her exhibitions stretched for blocks (for example, at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington or the Tate Modern in London). This created huge hype and a fear of missing out.
- Collaborations with luxury: in 2012 and 2023, her famous dots adorned Louis Vuitton collections. This elevated her name to the status of a global pop culture brand, which immediately reflected in gallery and auction prices.
Collectors and investment funds began buying her works as "blue chips" — reliable assets. Buying a Kusama painting became a guarantee that the piece would not lose value but only increase.
Sales records
The auction breakthrough came in the 2010s:
- White No. 28 (1960) from the Infinity Nets series was sold for $7,1 million in 2014, making Kusama the most expensive living female artist at the time.
- Interminable Net #4 (1959) — about $7,1 million.
- No. Red B (1960) — $7 million.
- Some individual works reached $10+ million (for example, Untitled (Nets), 1959).
In total, works worth more than $900 million have been sold at auction — a record for a female artist.
Where the works are located
Kusama's paintings and installations are held in leading museums around the world:
- MoMA (New York)
- Hirshhorn Museum (Washington) — has the largest collection of Infinity Mirror Rooms
- Guggenheim Museum
- Tate Modern (London)
- Yayoi Kusama Museum (Tokyo, opened in 2017) — houses the main collection
- Matsumoto City Museum of Art (the artist's hometown)
After her death
Yayoi Kusama died on 14 August 2026 in a Tokyo hospital at the age of 97.
In the art market, the death of an artist is always a trigger, as the number of works becomes strictly finite. However, in Kusama's case, the market was prepared in advance. Her works were already breaking records during her lifetime. After her death, prices did not so much "soar" from zero as became fixed at an ultra-high level. Demand for her early works (from the 1950s–1960s) and iconic pumpkin sculptures only intensified, as collectors seek to acquire a part of a closed legacy.
Fortune and legacy
The exact figures of Kusama's personal finances are private information, but art analysts for many years in a row recognized her as the most expensive and successful living female artist in the world. Taking into account sales through galleries, reproduction rights, and collaborations, her personal fortune was estimated by experts at hundreds of millions of dollars.
Yayoi Kusama was never married and had no children. During her lifetime, in 2017, she founded the Yayoi Kusama Foundation and at her own expense opened the Yayoi Kusama Museum in the Shinjuku district (Tokyo).
All her fortune, including:
- intellectual property rights and copyrights,
- archives and sketches,
- a significant portion of unsold works,
was bequeathed to this Foundation. The Foundation manages her legacy, organizes exhibitions around the world and, what is very important for the artist herself, directs part of the funds to support that very psychiatric hospital in Tokyo, where Kusama lived and worked for the last half century. Thus, her art literally continues to "heal" and support the space that saved her herself.
Her legacy is not only record prices, but also a revolutionary contribution to understanding the connection between mental health, art and cosmic consciousness. Yayoi Kusama truly dissolved into the universe she had been creating all her life — dot by dot.
