Yayoi Kusama1929~ 草間彌生

Yayoi Kusama, born on March 22, 1929 in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, is a Japanese avant-garde artist working in painting, sculpture, installation, and performance. Plagued from childhood by hallucinations of dots and nets caused by a mental illness, she transformed these visions into the polka-dot and infinity-net motifs that became her hallmark. She moved to New York in 1957 and rose to prominence in the 1960s through her “Infinity Nets” paintings, mirrored installations, and provocative happenings. After returning to Japan in 1973, she voluntarily took up residence in a psychiatric hospital while continuing to produce art, and her 1993 solo presentation at the Japan Pavilion of the Venice Biennale launched a global reevaluation of her work. Today she is regarded as one of the world’s most influential living artists, with the Yayoi Kusama Museum opening in Tokyo in 2017.