Yayoi Kusama

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About Yayoi Kusama

Born in Japan and trained in Nihonga painting, a rigorous formal style developed during the Meiji period (1868–1912), Kusama moved to New York City in 1958 due to her attraction to the experimental promise of the postwar international art scene. Kusama became initially recognized in 1959 for her Net paintings—vast canvases measuring up to 33 feet in width, entirely covered in rhythmic undulations of small, thickly painted loops.

Born in Japan and trained in Nihonga painting, a rigorous formal style developed during the Meiji period (1868–1912), Kusama moved to New York City in 1958 due to her attraction to the experimental promise of the postwar international art scene. Kusama became initially recognized in 1959 for her Net paintings—vast canvases measuring up to 33 feet in width, entirely covered in rhythmic undulations of small, thickly painted loops. She went on to develop other striking bodies of work and in the late 1960s, staging provocative happenings in various locations in New York. In the early 1970s Kusama returned to Japan, where she began writing, revisiting earlier themes, and in recent years continuing to invent embodiments of infinity in environments and freestanding sculptures. Following the success of her project for the Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1993—a mirror room filled with pumpkin sculptures—Kusama went on to produce major outdoor sculptural commissions.

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