Yayoi Kusama

From Matsumoto to New York

Yayoi Kusama was born in Matsumoto, Japan, in 1929. Her early work included paintings on paper, before the large canvases associated with her New York years. She went to the United States in 1957 and settled in New York in 1958. The distinction matters: her move abroad and her arrival in the city were separate events.

In Waves, dated 1953 by the image source, white openings interrupt a red band and the blue field around it. The marks vary in size and direction. It offers an early way to see how repeated shapes could organise an entire surface. The pattern takes priority over a conventional view of a landscape. That concern continued as her work expanded in scale.

Kusama official biography

David Zwirner artist biography

Artwork images © Yayoi Kusama, via WikiArt

Infinity Nets and the spaces between the dots

An Infinity Net is built from repeated painted loops. The small spaces they enclose can read as dots, although the painter has worked around them. Victoria Miro describes the net as a lattice whose negative spaces form the dot pattern. This gives the viewer something precise to look for: the relationship between a painted line and the ground showing through it.

The close red tones of Infinity Net, dated 1998 by WikiArt, make the pattern less immediately obvious than the dots on a pumpkin. Some marks catch the light while others recede. Looking slowly reveals an uneven surface, rather than a mechanical grid. Repetition does not remove the differences between individual marks.

Kusama connected these recurring patterns with visual experiences she had described since childhood. Her account is part of the history of the work. The paintings also reward attention to what is physically there: closely packed loops extending towards the edges of the canvas.

Victoria Miro artist biography

Kusama official biography

Artwork images © Yayoi Kusama, via WikiArt

Accumulation: when repetition becomes sculpture

Accumulation No. 1, made in 1962 and held by MoMA, covers an armchair with hand-sewn, stuffed forms. Kusama painted the forms and called them phalluses. The chair remains recognisable, but its surface has become difficult to imagine using. An ordinary piece of furniture becomes a sculpture through the repeated addition of soft material.

MoMA records sewn stuffed fabric, paint and chair fringe as its materials. That account helps distinguish the work from a carved or cast object. Each protrusion had to be made and attached. The labour of repeating a form, already visible in the paintings, now occupied the space around a household object.

MoMA: Accumulation No. 1

How the Infinity Mirror Rooms work

Infinity Mirror Room: Phalli’s Field first appeared in 1965. Mirrors multiplied the view of soft, spotted forms across the floor. The Hirshhorn explains how mirrors let Kusama extend the repetition of her Accumulation sculptures beyond the number of objects she could physically make. Reflection became a working method.

A room has a finite size, even when its reflections appear to continue without a visible end. The visitor’s body also enters that repeated image. Moving changes the relationship between the real objects and their reflections, which is why a photograph gives only one view of an installation.

Later rooms use different materials and lighting. The Broad’s Infinity Mirrored Room: The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away, dated 2013, includes LEDs, acrylic balls and water alongside mirrors. Its illuminated space should not be treated as the same work as the spotted field of 1965. The shared method produces distinct environments.

Hirshhorn: Infinity Mirror Rooms

The Broad: The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away

Historical Phalli’s Field photograph © Eiko Hosoe; artwork © Yayoi Kusama, via WikiArt

Why pumpkins recur in Kusama’s work

The pumpkin was a familiar plant from Kusama’s childhood surroundings. Victoria Miro connects the motif to her family’s cultivation of seeds and records her description of pumpkin images as a form of self-portraiture. The subject returned across paintings and sculptures, including installations made with mirrors.

In Yellow Pumpkin, dated 1992 by WikiArt, rows of dots follow the ridges of the yellow form. The varying size of those dots helps describe its rounded volume. Behind it, a dense net pattern covers the dark ground. Looking at both patterns shows how the same vocabulary can describe a solid object and a surrounding field.

The banner also includes Pumpkin, dated 1983 by the image source, as a view of a three-dimensional object. Its projecting stem and irregular surface provide a useful comparison with the frontal image of Yellow Pumpkin. The motif changes with the medium.

Victoria Miro artist biography

Artwork images © Yayoi Kusama, via WikiArt

Narcissus Garden and the reflected viewer

Kusama presented Narcissus Garden as an unofficial installation and performance at the Venice Biennale in 1966. MoMA PS1 describes silver spheres made from plastic arranged on the lawn outside the Italian Pavilion. Kusama offered individual spheres for sale. Her participation in this event was different from officially representing Japan at the Biennale, which she did in 1993.

Later versions use mirrored stainless steel spheres. The 2018 MoMA PS1 presentation placed 1,500 of them inside a former train garage at Fort Tilden. Each sphere reflected a small, distorted view of the building. The work uses reflections in the space around the viewer, instead of enclosing the viewer within a mirrored room.

MoMA PS1: Narcissus Garden

David Zwirner artist biography

Flowers, mushrooms and later paintings

Kusama’s repeated patterns also surround recognisable plants and animals. Flowers, dated 1983 by WikiArt, places a green vase against a dark net-covered ground. In Dandelions, 1985, jagged leaves carry their own dot pattern. Butterfly, 1988, sets spotted wings against a red mesh. Each image gives the figure and the surrounding space a different pattern to carry.

Mushrooms, dated 1995 by the image source, makes that contrast particularly clear. The caps have several kinds of spots, while their stems carry smaller repeated marks. A pink net fills the background. Ready to Blossom in the Morning, 1989, uses dots behind the large flower heads; Waves on the Hudson River, 1988, instead arranges curling bands across the surface. These images show why the dots alone are an incomplete account of her painting.

Her later My Eternal Soul paintings, begun in 2009, developed recurring faces and eyes within densely patterned compositions. The smaller Every Day I Pray for Love paintings continued her investigation of line and form. She returned to Japan in 1973 and continued making art there. Her official studio announcement records that she painted until her final days, before her death in Tokyo on 14 August 2026, aged 97.

The existing sculpture image on this page is The Statue of Venus Obliterated by Infinity Nets, as identified by its photograph source. Dots cover a familiar classical figure and the rectangular surface behind it. The photograph is not an image of a stand-alone Infinity Net painting; its title has been corrected here. The photograph is credited to Mofei Wu under CC BY-SA 4.0, separately from the underlying artwork.

Victoria Miro artist biography

Kusama official biography

Official announcement, 27 August 2026

Artwork images © Yayoi Kusama, via WikiArt

Venus photograph by Mofei Wu, CC BY-SA 4.0; artwork © Yayoi Kusama

Photograph licence: CC BY-SA 4.0

Museum collections and planning a visit

MoMA in New York holds Accumulation No. 1. The Broad in Los Angeles holds The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away. The Hirshhorn in Washington, DC, documents the development of the mirror rooms and holds a later refabrication of Phalli’s Field. These collections offer different routes into Kusama’s work, from a single transformed chair to an environment visitors can enter.

The Yayoi Kusama Museum opened in Tokyo in 2017. Check the museum’s current exhibition and booking information before travelling. A collection holding does not guarantee that a particular work is on display, and a museum visit may require a separate reservation for a mirror room.

MoMA: Accumulation No. 1

The Broad: The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away

Hirshhorn: Infinity Mirror Rooms

David Zwirner artist biography