Yayoi Kusama, The Legacy of Infinity

27 August 2026

Yayoi Kusama, one of the most distinctive and influential artists of the 20th and 21st  centuries, has died at the age of 97. Born in Matsumoto, Japan, in 1929, Kusama developed a visual language of extraordinary originality across painting, sculpture, installation, performance and writing. Her passing marks the end of a remarkable career spanning more than seven decades, during which she transformed deeply personal experiences into a universal artistic language.

From an early age, Kusama experienced visions that would become central to her work, inspiring the recurring nets, dots, and proliferating forms that came to define her practice. After studying nihonga in Kyoto, she moved to the United States in 1957 and became a prominent figure in New York's avant-garde. During the 1960s, her radical paintings, soft sculptures, installations, and happenings challenged conventional distinctions between art, performance, and everyday life.

Throughout her career, repetition became a visual device as well as a philosophical means of exploring infinity, self-obliteration, and the relationship with the universe. From the hypnotic Infinity Nets to her celebrated pumpkins and immersive mirror rooms, Kusama created environments in which boundaries appear to dissolve into endless space.

Her legacy endures not only in the instantly recognisable imagery that brought her international acclaim, but in a body of work that demonstrated the transformative power of art to turn individual experience into a vision of infinite possibility.