'Creative thinking is born of loneliness': Artist Yayoi Kusama dies at 97

The dotty pumpkins and kaleidoscope rooms of Yayoi Kusama, who has died aged 97, were as vibrant as the artist herself, but her exuberant work was the expression of a long battle with mental illness.

Once a fixture of the 1960s pop and minimalist scenes in New York, Japan's "polka dot queen" found huge commercial success in her later decades.

Her larger-than-life paintings, sculptures and installations — inspired by vivid hallucinations — sold for millions of dollars and packed out top galleries.

Kusama, instantly recognisable in her bright red wig and bold spotted outfits, worked well into old age from the psychiatric hospital in Tokyo where she lived voluntarily for the second half of her life.

But she also struggled with her feelings for her home country, which she left for decades and once described as "full of disdain for women".

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Born in 1929, the youngest daughter of a wealthy but troubled family, Kusama started producing her signature dot and net patterns at the age of 10.

"My mother had regrets about my birth, and I was driven to the edge psychologically," she wrote in her autobiography, A Personal History of Polka Dots.

"One day, after seeing a tablecloth with a red flower pattern on a desk, I saw the same red flower pattern all over the ceiling, windows and pillars. It filled the room, and covered my body."

Art provided a release for the young Kusama, whose father, a seedling merchant, was unfaithful to her mother.

"When I was sad or lonely, everything would be cured when I drew pictures," she said.

In the book, Kusama explained her concept of "self-obliteration" — a recurrent theme throughout her career.

"I put dots all over my body and make all the surroundings dot patterns. By creating the same thing over and over, my own existence is buried in the art."

Kusama studied Japanese painting in Kyoto, against her parents' wishes, and held her first solo exhibition in 1952 in her hometown of Matsumoto in central Japan.