Avant-garde artist and novelist. Born in 1929 in Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture. From a young age, Yayoi Kusama experienced visual and auditory hallucinations, and began creating net and polka-dot pattern pictures. In 1957, she went to the United States and began making net paintings and soft sculptures, as well as organizing happenings and developing installations that made use of mirrors and lights, establishing herself as an avant-garde artist. Overcoming various obsessions, she discovered an artistic philosophy of self-obliteration via the obsessive repetition and multiplication of single motifs. She has held exhibitions at various museums throughout the world, and in recent years her large-scale retrospective exhibitions at the Tate Modern and Pompidou Centre have elicited considerable responses. She recorded more than 2 million visitors to her tours in Latin America and Asia, which led to her being named the ‘world’s most popular artist in 2014’ by the Art Newspaper. In 2016, she received Japan’s Order of Culture. In 2017, a North American tour of her work started at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.
Born in Nagano Prefecture.
Avant-garde sculptor, painter and novelist.
Started to paint using polka dots and nets as motifs at around age ten ,and created fantastic paintings in watercolors, pastels and oils.
Went to the United States in 1957. Showed large paintings, soft sculptures, and environmental sculptures using mirrors and electric lights. In the latter 1960s, staged many happenings such as body painting festivals, fashion shows and anti-war demonstrations. Launched media-related activities such as film production and newspaper publication. In 1968, the film “Kusama's Self-Obliteration"which Kusama produced and starred in won a prize at the Fourth International Experimental Film Competition in Belgium and the Second Maryland Film Festival and the second prize at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Held exhibitions and staged happenings also in various countries in Europe.
Returned to Japan in 1973. While continuing to produce and show art works, Kusama issued a number of novels and anthologies. In 1983, the novel “The Hustlers Grotto of Christopher Street" won the Tenth Literary Award for New Writers from the monthly magazine Yasei Jidai.
In 1986, held solo exhibitions at the Musee Municipal, Dole and the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Calais, France, in 1989, solo exhibitions at the Center for International Contemporary Arts, New York and the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, England. In 1993, participated in the 45th Venice Biennale.
Began to create open-air sculptures in 1994. Produced open-air pieces for the Fukuoka Kenko Center, the Fukuoka Municipal Museum of Art, the Bunka-mura on Benesse Island of Naoshima, Kirishima Open-Air Museum and Matsumoto City Museum of Art, , in front of Matsudai Station, Niigata,TGV's Lille-Europe Station in France, Beverly Gardens Park, Beverly hills, Pyeonghwa Park,
Anyang and a mural for the hallway at subway station in Lisbon.
Began to show works mainly at galleries in New York in 1996. A solo show held in New York in the same year won the Best Gallery Show in 1995/96 and the Best Gallery Show in 1996/97 from the International Association of Art Critics in 1996.
From1998 to 1999, a major retrospective of Kusama's works which opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art traveled to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Walker Art Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.
In 2000, Kusama won The Education Minister's Art Encouragement Prize and Foreign-Minister's Commendations. Her solo exhibition that started at Le Consortium in France in the same year traveled to Maison de la culture du Japon, Paris, KUNSTHALLEN BRANDTS ÆDEFABRIK, Denmark, Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, KUNSTHALLE Wien, Art Sonje Center, Seoul.
Received the Asahi Prize in 2001, the Medal with Dark Navy Blue Ribbon in 2002, the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Officier), and the Nagano Governor Prize (for the contribution in encouragement of art and culture) in 2003
In 2004, Her solo exhibition “KUSAMATRIX" started at Mori Museum in Tokyo. This exhibition drew visitors totaling 520,000 people. In the same year, another solo exhibition started at The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo In 2005, it traveled to The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto,
Matsumoto City Museum of Art.
Received the 2006 National Lifetime Achievement Awards, the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Losette and The Praemium Imperiale -Painting- in 2006.
In 2008, Documentary film : “Yayoi Kusama, I adore myself" released in Japan and also screened at international film festival and museum. Exhibition tour started at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, traveled to Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney in Australia in 2009, City Gallery Wellington in New Zealand. Conferred the honorary citizen of Matsumoto city.
Solo exhibition at Gagosian Gallery NY and LA, Victora Miro Gallery in London and Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea in Milan. Honored as Person of Cultural Merits in Japan 2009.
In 2010, solo exhibition and permanent outdoor sculpture at Towada Art Center in Japan.?Participation to Sydney Biennale and Aichi Triennale. Solo exhibition at Victoria Miro Gallery in London, fiac in Paris.
2011, solo exhibition at Gagosian gallery (Roma), Victoria Miro gallery (London). Europe and North America retrospective tour started at Museo
Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid traveling to Centre Pompidou
(Paris), TATE MODERN (London) and Whitney Museum (New York). Solo exhibition at Watari Art Museum (Tokyo). In September, participate in the 2011 Chengdu Biennale (China). Programmed solo exhibition at Queensland Art Gallery (Brisbane) in November.
2012, “Eternity of Eternal Eternity", recent works solo national traveling show started at National Museum of Art, Osaka traveled to The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, Matsumoto City Museum of Art, Nagano, Niigata City Art Museum. In the next year, it travel to Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Oita Art Museum and Museum of Art, Koch. Solo exhibition at Victoria Miro gallery (London). Shinjuku Honorary Citizen Award. The American Academy Of Arts and Letters Foreign Honorary Membership. Collaborated with Louis Vuitton creative director Marc Jacobs on collaborative collection “LOUIS VUITTON × YAYOI KUSAMA Collection".
2013, “Yayoi Kusama. Obsesión infinita [Infinite Obsession]", South America retrospective tour started at Malba - Fundacacion Constantini. It will travel to Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Centro Cultutal Banco do Brasil, Brasília, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo and Mexico City. “KUSAMA YAYOI, A Dream I Dreamed", recent works exhibition tour started at Daegu Art Museum, Korea. It will travel to Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai, Seoul Arts Centre, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.
In 1959, Kusama had her first solo exhibition in New York at the Brata Gallery, an artist's co-op. She showed a series of white net paintings which were enthusiastically reviewed by Donald Judd (both Judd and Frank Stella then acquired paintings from the show).[17] Kusama has since exhibited work with, among others, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, and Jasper Johns. Exhibiting alongside European artists including Lucio Fontana, Pol Bury, Otto Piene, and Gunther Uecker, in 1962 she was the only female artist to take part in the widely acclaimed Nul (Zero) international group exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
1976: Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art
1987: Fukuoka, Japan
1989: Center for International Contemporary Arts, New York
1993: Represented Japan at the Venice Biennale
1996: Recent Works at Robert Miller Gallery
1998–1999: Retrospective exhibition of work toured the US and Japan
1998: "Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama,1958–1969", LACMA
1998–99: "Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama,1958–1969" - exhibit traveled to Museum of Modern Art, New York, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo)
2000: Le Consortium, Dijon
2001–2003: Le Consortium - exhibit traveled to Maison de la Culture du Japon, Paris; Kunsthallen Brandts, Odense, Denmark; Les Abattoirs, Toulouse; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; and Artsonje Center, Seoul
2004: KUSAMATRIX, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
2004–2005: KUSAMATRIX traveled to Art Park Museum of Contemporary Art, Sapporo Art Park, Hokkaido); Eternity – Modernity, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (touring Japan)
2007: FINA Festival 2007. Kusama created Guidepost to the New Space, a vibrant outdoor installation for Birrarung Marr beside the Yarra River in Melbourne. In 2009, the Guideposts were re-installed at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, this time displayed as floating "humps" on a lake.[56]
2008: The Mirrored Years, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
2009: The Mirrored Years traveled to Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand
August 2010: Aichi Triennale 2010, Nagoya. Works were exhibited inside the Aichi Arts Center, out of the center and Toyota car polka dot project.
2010: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen purchased the work Infinity Mirror Room - Phalli's Field. As of 13 September of that year the mirror room is permanently exhibited in the entrance area of the museum.
July 2011: Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain
2012: Tate Modern, London.[57] Described as "akin to being suspended in a beautiful cosmos gazing at infinite worlds, or like a tiny dot of fluoresecent plankton in an ocean of glowing microscopic life",[58] the exhibition features a retrospective spanning Kusama's entire career.
15 July 2013 – 3 November 2013: Daegu Art Museum, Daegu, Korea
30 June 2013 – 16 September 2013: MALBA, the Latinamerican Art Museum of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
22 May 2014 – 27 June 2014: Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil
17 September 2015 – 24 January 2016: In Infinity, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark[59]
12 June – 9 August 2015: Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Theory, The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia. This was the artist's first solo exhibition in Russia.[60]
19 February – 15 May 2016: Yayoi Kusama - I uendeligheten, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, Norway
20 September 2015 – September 2016: Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrored Room, The Broad, Los Angeles, California
12 June – 18 September 2016: Kusama: At the End of the Universe, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, Texas
1 May 2016 – 30 November 2016: Yayoi Kusama: Narcissus Garden, The Glass House, New Canaan, Connecticut.
25 May 2016 – 30 July 2016: Yayoi Kusama: sculptures, paintings & mirror rooms, Victoria Miro Gallery, London, United Kingdom.
7 October 2016 – 22 January 2017: Yayoi Kusama: In Infinity, organised by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in cooperation with Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Moderna Museet/ArkDes and Helsinki Art Museum HAM in Helsinki, Finland.[61]
5 November 2016 – 17 April 2017: "Dot Obsessions - Tasmania," MONA: Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Australia.[62]
23 February 2017 – 14 May 2017: Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, a traveling museum show originating at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC [63][40]
30 June 2017 – 10 September 2017: Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, exhibition travels to Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington
9 June 2017 – 3 September 2017: Yayoi Kusama: Life is the Heart of a Rainbow, National Gallery Singapore.[64]
October 2017 – January 2018: Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, exhibition travels to The Broad, Los Angeles, California
October 2017 - February 2018: Yayoi Kusama: All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas
March 2018 – May 2018: Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, exhibition travels to Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
March 2018 – July 2018: Yayoi Kusama: All About My Love, Matsumoto City Museum of Art, Matsumoto, Nagano, Japan
May 2018 – September 2018: Yayoi Kusama: Life is the Heart of a Rainbow, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara (Museum MACAN), Jakarta, Indonesia[65]
July 2018 – October 2018: Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, exhibition travels to Cleveland Museum of Art, exhibition travels to Cleveland, Ohio
July 2018 — November 2018: Yayoi Kusama: Where The Lights In My Heart Go, exhibition travels to deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA
Rodenbeck, J.F. "Yayoi Kusama: Surface, Stitch, Skin." Zegher, M. Catherine de. Inside the Visible: An Elliptical Traverse of 20th Century Art in, of, and from the Feminine. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1996. ISBN 978-0-262-54081-0 OCLC 33863951
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 30 Jan. – 12 May 1996.
Kusama, Yayoi, and Damien Hirst. Yayoi Kusama Now. New York, N.Y.: Robert Miller Gallery, 1998. ISBN 978-0-944-68058-2 OCLC 42448762
Robert Miller Gallery, New York, 11 June – 7 August 1998.
Kusama, Yayoi, and Lynn Zelevansky. Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958-1968. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1998. ISBN 978-0-875-87181-3 OCLC 39030076
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 8 Mar. – 8 June 1998; three other locations through 4 July 1999.
Kusama, Yayoi. Yayoi Kusama. Wien: Kunsthalle Wien, 2002. ISBN 978-3-852-47034-4 OCLC 602369060
Kusama, Yayoi. Yayoi Kusama. Paris: Les Presses du Reel, 2002. ISBN 978-0-714-83920-2 OCLC 50628150
Seven European exhibitions in France, Germany, Denmark, etc.; 2001–2003.
Kusama, Yayoi. Kusamatorikkusu = Kusamatrix. Tōkyō: Kadokawa Shoten, 2004. ISBN 978-4-048-53741-4 OCLC 169879689
Mori Art Museum, 7 Feb.–9 May 2004; Mori Geijutsu Bijutsukan, Sapporo, 5 June–22 Aug 2004.
Kusama, Yayoi, and Tōru Matsumoto. Kusama Yayoi eien no genzai = Yayoi Kusama: eternity-modernity. Tōkyō: Bijutsu Shuppansha, 2005. ISBN 978-4-568-10353-3 OCLC 63197423
Tōkyō Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, 26 Oct. – 19 December 2004; Kyōto Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, 6 Jan. – 13 February 2005; Hiroshima-shi Gendai Bijutsukan, 22 Feb. – 17 April 2005; Kumamoto-shi Gendai Bijutsukan, 29 Apr. – 3 July 2005; at Matsumoto-shi Bijutsukan, 30 July – 10 October 2005.
Applin, Jo, and Yayoi Kusama. Yayoi Kusama. London: Victoria Miro Gallery, 2007. ISBN 978-0-955-45644-2 OCLC 501970783
Victoria Miro Gallery, London, 10 Oct.–17 Nov 2007.
Kusama, Yayoi. Yayoi Kusama. New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2009. ISBN 978-1-932-59894-0 OCLC 320277816
Gagosian Gallery, New York, 16 Apr. – 27 June 2009; Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, 30 May – 17 July 2009.
Morris, Frances, and Jo Applin. Yayoi Kusama. London: Tate Publishing, 2012. ISBN 978-1-854-37939-9 OCLC 781163109
Reina Sofia, Madrid, 10 May–12 Sep 2011; Centre Pompidou, Paris, 10 Oct 2011 – 9 Jan 2012; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 12 July–30 Sep 2012; Tate Modern (London), 9 Feb.–5 June 2012.
Kusama, Yayoi, and Akira Tatehata. Yayoi Kusama: I Who Have Arrived in Heaven. New York: David Zwirner, 2014. ISBN 978-0-989-98093-7 OCLC 879584489
David Zwirner Gallery, New York, 8 Nov. – 21 December 2013.
Source: Louisiana Channel
Source: Bloomberg Markets and Finance
