In Memoriam

Yayoi Kusama

1929–2026

Yayoi Kusama creating the My Eternal Soul series in her studio. © YAYOI KUSAMA

 

It is with great sadness that we mourn the loss of  Yayoi Kusama, who passed away at the age of 97.

Kusama devoted herself to a life as an avant-garde artist, working primarily in the visual arts while also extending her practice to performance, novels, poetry, and other forms of expression. She continued to paint until the very end, remaining steadfast to her lifelong belief that love can save the world.  David Zwirner states:

It’s been one of the great privileges of my professional life to have been able to represent Yayoi Kusama’s extraordinary art for the last fifteen years. The last time Kusama visited New York, a city where she lived for many years, was in 2013. During that visit, she opened the first of many exhibitions in our galleries that had hour-long lines for the chance to experience her work. Her steadfast message of love and peace has now reached millions of admirers around the globe. At the time of her passing, Kusama was, without a doubt, the most famous living artist in the world.

Earlier this summer, I was reminded again of Kusama’s genius when I visited her career retrospective at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne; the exhibition presented more than 300 works, from her childhood drawings to the present. Kusama’s art influenced the histories of minimalism, pop art, and performance art; more recently her large-scale installations single-handedly pioneered what is now referred to as experiential art. Shortly after my visit to the Museum Ludwig, they announced that this exhibition had become the most successful in its history. Kusama must have been pleased to read this. I will miss her terribly.

Kusama around age ten, c. 1939. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Installation view, Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers, David Zwirner, New York, 2023. Photo by Scott Rudd

Installation view, Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers, David Zwirner, New York, 2023

Installation view, Yayoi Kusama: EVERY DAY I PRAY FOR LOVE, David Zwirner, New York, 2019

Installation view of Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room—The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away, 2013, in Yayoi Kusama: I Who Have Arrived in Heaven, David Zwirner, New York, 2013. Collection of The Broad, Los Angeles

 
A photograph of Yayoi Kusama with her work, Infinity Mirrored Room – Phalli’s Field, dated 1965.

Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirror Room–Phalli’s Field, 1965. © YAYOI KUSAMA

A photograph of Yayoi Kusama with her installation titled Narcissus Garden at the 33rd Venice Biennale, in 1966.

Yayoi Kusama lying in Narcissus Garden, 1966, installed at the Venice Biennale, 1966. Photo courtesy Yayoi Kusama Studio. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Installation view of Yayoi Kusama, Pumpkin, 1994, Naoshima, Japan, 2022. Photo by Kristen de La Vallière

Born in Matsumoto, Japan in 1929, Kusama held her first solo show there in 1952. In the mid-1960s she established herself in New York as a leading avant-garde artist through groundbreaking performances, happenings, events, and exhibitions. Her work gained widespread recognition in 1989 with solo shows at the Center for International Contemporary Arts, New York, and the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. She represented Japan at the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993 to critical acclaim, and in 1998 the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, co-organized Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958–1968, which traveled to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.

A young fan dressed up as Kusama, in line to see Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers, David Zwirner, New York, 2023. Photo by Scott Rudd

 

Visitors lined up around the block on 19th Street to see Yayoi Kusama: EVERYDAY I PRAY FOR LOVE, David Zwirner, New York, 2019. Photo by Victor Llorente for W Magazine

Installation view, Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers, David Zwirner, New York, 2023

 

Installation view of Yayoi Kusama, FLOWERS THAT SPEAK ALL ABOUT MY HEART GIVEN TO THE SKY, 2018, in the exhibition Yayoi Kusama, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 2026. Collection of the Artist. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Installation view of the exhibition Yayoi Kusama, at Fondation Beyeler in Riehen/Basel, Switzerland, dated 2025.

Installation view of Yayoi Kusama, Narcissus Garden, 1966/2025, in Yayoi Kusama, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland, 2025–2026. Photo by Matthias Willi. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Installation view of the exhibition Yayoi Kusama, at Fondation Beyeler in Riehen/Basel, Switzerland, dated 2025.

Installation view of Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room – Illusion Inside the Heart, 2025, in Yayoi Kusama, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, 2025–2026. Photo by Mark Niedermann. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Since the late 1990s, her museum shows have drawn record crowds, and her global fame has grown alongside Instagram, where her work is shared by millions. From 2012 to 2015, three major solo presentations traveled simultaneously through Japan, Asia, and Central and South America; one of them, Infinite Obsession, drew nearly two million visitors across Buenos Aires’s MALBA-Fundación Costantini and Rio’s Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil before opening at Museo Tamayo in Mexico City. A 2011–2012 retrospective traveled to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

In 2016, Kusama was named to TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People. From 2017 to 2019, the survey Infinity Mirrors traveled to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Seattle Art Museum; The Broad, Los Angeles; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; The Cleveland Museum of Art; and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

In New York, KUSAMA: Cosmic Nature was on view at The New York Botanical Garden in 2021, and in 2023 her commissioned mosaic A Message of Love, Directly from My Heart unto the Universe (2022) went on permanent view at Grand Central’s Madison Concourse. Yayoi Kusama: Infinite Love was presented at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2023 and 2024, followed by a comprehensive retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, in 2024 and 2025.

In 2025, a major traveling European exhibition opened at the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel—the first Kusama retrospective in Switzerland. Kusama’s exhibition at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, closed earlier this month (August 2). This exhibition will travel to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, opening September 11, 2026.

Yayoi Kusama has been represented by David Zwirner since 2013, and the gallery has presented six solo exhibitions of Kusama’s work (2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021, and 2023) at their New York galleries.

My entire life has been painted here.
 Every day, any day.
 I will never cease dedicating my whole life
 to my love for the universe.
 Oh my dearest art.
 With the challenge of creating new art, I work as if dying;
 these works are my everything.  —Yayoi Kusama

 

Yayoi Kusama in her studio. © YAYOI KUSAMA

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