Yayoi Kusama, Japanese avant-garde artist known for polka dots, dies at 97

Celebrated Japanese avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama, globally famous for her signature polka dots and immersive "Infinity Mirror Rooms," has died at age 97 in a Tokyo hospital. Throughout her life, Kusama channeled childhood trauma and vivid hallucinations into a prolific career spanning painting, sculpture, and performance art. After facing early obscurity in New York and rejection from Japan's conservative cultural elite, she voluntarily entered a psychiatric hospital in 1977, where she lived and worked until her death. Her legacy was later cemented by massive global retrospectives, record-breaking auction sales, and social media fame.

Kusama's death at 97

• ▪The Yayoi Kusama Museum and the artist's official website announced Yayoi Kusama's death on Wednesday, August 26, 2026, and Thursday, August 27, 2026, without providing a cause of death
• ▪Japanese avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama died at the age of 97 in a Tokyo hospital on August 14, 2026

Infinity Mirror Rooms phenomenon

• ▪A 2017 exhibition of Yayoi Kusama's work at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. attracted 475,000 visitors, marking the institution's highest attendance in 40 years
• ▪Yayoi Kusama's "Infinity Mirror Rooms" installations, first created in 1965 with "Phalli's Field," became global social media phenomena in the mid-2010s, drawing record-breaking museum crowds

Mental health struggles

• ▪In 1977, following a decline in her mental health after returning to Japan, Yayoi Kusama voluntarily checked herself into a Tokyo psychiatric hospital, where she lived permanently for the rest of her life
• ▪Yayoi Kusama experienced vivid hallucinations of flashing lights, dots, and talking flowers since childhood, which she used as a primary source of inspiration for her artwork

Artistic practice until death

• ▪Yayoi Kusama's artwork generated significant commercial success later in her life, with her 1959 painting "Untitled (Nets)" selling for $10.5 million at an auction in May 2022
• ▪Yayoi Kusama continued to paint and produce art from her Tokyo psychiatric hospital and nearby studio until her final days

Early career in New York

• ▪Yayoi Kusama moved to New York in the late 1950s, where she participated in the pop art and avant-garde movements alongside contemporaries Andy Warhol and Donald Judd
• ▪During the 1960s counterculture movement in New York, Yayoi Kusama staged provocative "happenings," including anti-war body painting events and a 1968 mock homosexual wedding

Japanese cultural reception

• ▪Yayoi Kusama faced severe criticism and was shunned by the Japanese cultural elite in the 1950s and 1960s due to her provocative style and embrace of nudity
• ▪In 1993, Yayoi Kusama represented Japan at the Venice Biennale, cementing a major revaluation of her work and her acceptance by the international art establishment

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