‘The only method I have found that relieved my illness is to keep creating art’: remembering Yayoi Kusama

In the history of the National Gallery of Victoria, their most successful ticketed exhibition did not feature the work of Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet or Pablo Picasso.

It was of the veteran Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama, who has died aged 97 .

Held over the summer months in 2024–25, the Melbourne exhibition attracted 570,537 ticketed visitors .

Kusama’s exhibitions throughout the world have attracted huge crowds.

Her infinity mirror rooms, sprawling seas of polka dots, dancing pumpkins and huge expanses of reflective surfaces have become some of the most photographed art objects in human history.

Her art has had a huge impact on many art movements of the 20th and 21st centuries, including pop art, performance art, minimalism, environmental art, video art, fashion, filmmaking and feminism.

Read more: Everyone will want to see Yayoi Kusama at the NGV.

Those who don’t will spend a lifetime regretting it A difficult childhood Kusama was born on March 22 1929 in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, Japan, to parents who were merchants and operated a plant nursery and seed farm.

She suffered from hallucinations from childhood and by the age of ten had created paintings in watercolours, pastels and oils using polka dot and net motifs that she encountered in her visions.

She described her childhood as traumatic, with a physically abusive mother and a womanising father, and a time when her artistic endeavours were discouraged.

She found refuge in her art.

Her childhood was overshadowed by World War II.

By the time she was 13, she was sewing parachutes for Japanese soldiers and was aware of American bombers flying overhead and of constant air-raid sirens.

She attended Arigasaki High School and, in 1948, studied Nihonga painting at the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts.