Yayoi Kusama, whose obsessive repetitions of dots and nets became a means of expressing infinity, leaving an indelible mark on contemporary art worldwide, died on August 14 of multiple organ failure at a hospital in Tokyo. She was 97. Her death was reported on Thursday by Kyodo News and later confirmed by her David Zwirner Gallery, her longtime representation.
“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,” wrote David Zwirner in a statement. He continued, “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 an hour-long lines for the chance to experience her work… At the time of her passing, Kusama was, without a doubt, the most famous living artist in the world. I will miss her terribly.”
Kusama developed a singular visual language that drew on the hallucinations she had experienced since childhood. She emerged as a significant figure in New York’s avant-garde scene in the late 1950s and continued working for more than seven decades, moving freely among painting, sculpture, installation, performance, literature, and fashion. Major surveys of her work have been staged at museums around the world, while her striking likeness eventually transcended into a global brand onto itself, making her the most instantly recognizable artist to emerge from postwar Japan.
