A scuplture by Yayoi Kusama called Dancing Pumpkin dated 2020

’s (b. 1929) work has transcended two of the most important art movements of the second half of the twentieth century: pop art and minimalism. Her highly influential career spans paintings, performances, room-size presentations, outdoor sculptural installations, literary works, films, fashion, design, and interventions within existing architectural structures, which allude at once to microscopic and macroscopic universes.

Born in Matsumoto, Japan, Kusama has been the subject of both solo and group presentations worldwide. She presented her first solo show in her native Japan in 1952. In the mid-1960s, she established herself in New York as an important avant-garde artist by staging groundbreaking and influential happenings, events, and exhibitions. Her work gained renewed widespread recognition in the late 1980s following a number of international solo exhibitions, including shows at the Center for International Contemporary Arts, New York, and the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, both of which took place in 1989. She represented Japan in 1993 at the 45th Venice Biennale, to much critical acclaim. In 1998, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, co-organized 

, which toured to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1998-1999), and Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (1999).

In 2011 to 2012, her work was the subject of a large-scale retrospective that 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. From 2012 through 2015, three major museum solo presentations of the artist’s work simultaneously traveled to major museums throughout Japan, Asia, and Central and South America. In 2015, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, organized a comprehensive overview of Kusama’s practice that traveled to Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and Helsinki Art Museum. In 2017-2019, a major survey of the artist’s work, 

, was presented at 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, Ohio; and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. 

, which marked the first large-scale exhibition of Kusama’s work presented in Southeast Asia, opened at the National Gallery of Singapore in 2017 and traveled to the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara, Jakarta. In 2019, 

 an exhibition tailor-made specifically for the Fosun Foundation, Shanghai, included more than forty works by the artist.

A comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s work was on view at Gropius Bau, Berlin, in 2021, and traveled to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2022. 

 was on view at The New York Botanical Garden in 2021. In 2022, several major exhibitions of the artist’s work opened, including 

Yayoi Kusama: DANCING LIGHTS THAT FLEW UP TO THE UNIVERSE, 

One with Eternity: Yayoi Kusama in the Hirshhorn Collection, 

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC. A major retrospective of the artist’s oeuvre, 

was on view from 2022 to 2023 at the M+ Museum in Hong Kong, then traveled to Guggenheim Bilbao (2023) and Serralves Museum, Portugal (2024). Also in 2023, 

was on view at Aviva Studios, Manchester, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami presented the exhibition 

 was on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2024.

In 2023, a commissioned mosaic by Kusama, 

A Message of Love, Directly from My Heart unto the Universe

 (2022) was unveiled at the new Madison Concourse at Grand Central Station, New York, and will remain on permanent view.

Kusama has been represented by David Zwirner since 2013. The gallery’s inaugural exhibition in 2013 with the artist, titled

, spanned all three spaces at West 19th Street in New York. Her second gallery solo show, 

, was held at David Zwirner, New York, in 2015. Subsequent solo shows of the artist’s work at David Zwirner, New York include 

 in 2019. In 2021, David Zwirner, Victoria Miro, and Ota Fine Arts jointly presented 

I WANT YOUR TEARS TO FLOW WITH THE WORDS I WROTE

 in London, Tokyo, and New York. In 2023 at the gallery’s 19th Street location, the artist’s sixth solo exhibition with David Zwirner, 

Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers

Yayoi Kusama Museum, a museum dedicated to the artist’s work, opened October 1, 2017, in Tokyo with the inaugural exhibition 

Creation is a Solitary Pursuit, Love is What

. The museum’s fourteenth exhibition devoted to her work, 

Work by the artist is held in museum collections worldwide, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate, United Kingdom; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among numerous others. Kusama lives and works in Tokyo.

Yayoi Kusama, 2021.  Photo by Yusuke Miyazaki

Jenni Sorkin is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History at University of California, Santa Barbara. She holds a PhD in the History of Art from Yale University. She has written numerous in-depth essays on feminist art and issues of gender, and writes frequently on the intersection between gender, craft, material culture, and contemporary art. She has published and lectured widely as an art critic and curator, and is the author of 

 (2016), which examines gender and postwar ceramics practice at Black Mountain College and other utopian communities. In 2016, she co-curated, with Paul Schimmel, 

Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947–2016

, the inaugural exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in Los Angeles, in which Yayoi Kusama was included.

Jenni Sorkin

In a unique style that is both sensory and utopian, Yayoi Kusama’s work possesses a highly personal character, yet one that has connected profoundly with large audiences around the globe. Throughout her career she has been able to break down traditional barriers between work, artist, and spectator.

Kusama’s work—which spans paintings, performances, room-size presentations, sculptural installations, literary works, films, fashion, design, and interventions within existing architectural structures—has transcended some of the most important art movements of the second half of the twentieth century, including pop art and minimalism. Conveying extraordinary vitality and passion, her work seems to encompass an autobiographic, even confessional dimension. As stated by Roberta Smith in 

, “These paintings form a great big infinity room of their own, but one in which each part is also an autonomous work of art, its own piece of wobbly, handwrought infinity. You may not want to know these paintings Ms. Kusama has made, but in the moment their vitality is infectious. It is the vitality of an artist who lives to work, whose work keeps her alive.”

 documents the artist’s exhibition at David Zwirner’s Chelsea location in New York in late 2017, featuring a selection of paintings from her iconic 

series, new large-scale flower sculptures, a polka-dotted environment, and two 

. The monograph includes new scholarship on the artist by Jenni Sorkin, as well as a special foldout poster.

Yayoi Kusama: Festival of Life

Yayoi Kusama: Festival of Life | Books

David Zwirner is an art gallery with locations in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Hong Kong. We present physical and online exhibitions, podcasts, books, and more.