Yayoi Kusama, one of the world’s most celebrated and best-selling artists, has died age 97, according to a statement on the artist’s official website.
“It is with profound sorrow that (we announce) the passing of Yayoi Kusama at a hospital in Tokyo on August 14,” read the statement, posted on Thursday.
Kusama was, by the time of her death, one of contemporary art’s most popular and commercially successful figures. Her famous “Infinity Mirror Rooms,” large-scale installations that immersed audiences in endlessly repeating reflections of color and light, attracted millions of gallery visitors.
Her distinctive pumpkin sculptures and polka-dot paintings, meanwhile, generated millions of dollars in auction revenue.
But the global recognition of her work in later years was made all the more remarkable by the difficulties she overcame to achieve it, namely childhood trauma, mental illness and years of relative obscurity.
