Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama dies at 97 after a life dedicated to color

The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has died at the age of 97 in a Tokyo hospital after a life and career dedicated to color, as confirmed by a statement on his website.

Kusama would have died on August 14 but it was now that the news became known. “He never stopped painting until shortly before his death, continuing his search for eternal love and the soul throughout his 97 years of life“says the statement.

The Japanese woman dedicated her entire life to international activities being avant-garde in various fields such as fine arts, performing arts, novels and poetry.

Although his work has gone through great spanish museums like him Reina Sofia National Museum in 2011, three years ago the Japanese was the absolute protagonist in the Museo Guggenheim Bilbao with ‘Yayoi Kusama: from 1945 to today’, which was seen by 560,000 people. The art gallery assured in 2023 that it was already “one of the most popular and successful of the Museum”.

The artist began making her first drawings as a teenager during the Second World Waralthough it never stopped producing, which has led it to become one of the most influential figures of contemporary art and cultural icon of the 21st century.

Precisely, the exhibition in Bilbao was structured around the great topics and questions that have guided Kusama’s creative explorations throughout her life: infinity, accumulation, radical connectivity, the biocosmic, death and the life force.

She was a pioneer in the countercultural environment of the late 1960s and denounced the racial and gender discrimination, criticized war and militarism and attracted the attention of the media with his public ‘happenings’.

In addition to her psychedelic style – she mixed bright colors and mirrors – the Japanese woman achieved fame for her polka dots, with which she covered entire rooms, and sculptures with repetitive dot patterns.

In his last years he consolidated massive collaborations with global reach with luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton – he intervened in iconic stores in cities such as New York and Paris with giant figures and polka dots based on his image – and although he isolated himself from public life, between 2009 and 2021 he had developed his most extensive pictorial series, titled ‘My eternal soul’, composed of some 900 works.