Yayoi Kusama, who splashed polka dots across the art world, dies at 97
in Tokyo
[August 27, 2026]
By YURI KAGEYAMA
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, who splashed her signature
polka dots on paintings, sculptures and museum installations around the
world, has died, her studio said Thursday. She was 97.
Kusama died Aug. 14 at a hospital in Tokyo, Yayoi Kusama Studio said,
without specifying the cause of death.
“She continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her
brush, and continued exploration of forever love and eternal soul,” the
studio's statement said. “We will carry forward Kusama’s wishes and,
through art, continue to bring hope and strength for the future to
people around the world.”
Kusama, one of Japan’s most respected contemporary artists, was widely
exhibited around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the
Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Museum Ludwig in
Germany.
Repetitive motifs were her trademark, in various shapes, resembling
netting, swirls or worms, but most often dots, dancing proudly on her
canvases, or as sparkling balls or dots of light in her installations,
in all their vibrant psychedelic glory.
“Polka dots are fabulous,” Kusama said in a 2012 interview with The
Associated Press, appearing in her signature orange bob wig and polka
dot attire.
“I want to create a thousand paintings, maybe two thousand paintings, as
many as I can draw,” she said in her childlike but matter-of-fact tone.
“I will keep painting until I die.”
Pursuing her vision of art over a lifetime
Kusama insisted she drew the way she saw the world: covered with spots,
part of the hallucinations she said she had from childhood. She was in
and out of psychiatric institution for decades, although her sickness
did not hold her back as she was one of the first Japanese women to go
to New York to pursue her art, in 1957.
Although soft-spoken and shy in her mannerisms, Kusama was always
unabashedly bold in the assertion of her dotty vision, not only in
sticking to the style for decades but also in making it accessible to
the masses.
In her later years, as the times caught up with her art, she enjoyed
fame. She signed on with fashion brands like Louis Vuitton as well as
other licensed products like teacups, T-shirts and key chains with her
illustrations, including replicas of her likeness that were used in show
windows and other marketing.
In 2008, Christie’s auctioned her work for $5.8 million. In 2016, she
won the most prestigious award Japan gives its artists, the Order of
Culture.
Upon receiving the award, she told reporters she was more determined
than ever to pursue her art, stressing that the sincerity and devotion
she had demonstrated in her personal life were crucial parts of her
artistic legacy.
“I feel there is little left in my life, but I am now still fighting to
the death for my art,” she said. “I am giving all I have so that many
people will continue to be interested in my art, even after I am dead.”
Categories were not enough to represent her art
Kusama was called pop, avant-garde, feminist, just to name some of the
categories thrown at her, most of which Kusama brushed off as not quite
representative of her art.
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Japanese avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama, wearing a bright red wig
and a Louis Vuitton polka dot scarf, speaks during an interview at
her studio in Tokyo, on Aug. 1, 2012. (AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye, File)
 She was born in a middle-class
family but felt misunderstood, as her parents wanted her to simply
get married. They wanted to buy her kimono, not paints and brushes.
She knew she had to get away. She chose America.
When she arrived in New York, the fad was “action painting,”
characterized by dribbles, swooshes and smears, not dots. She
suffered years of poverty and obscurity. But she kept painting dots.
She put circles of paper on people’s bodies, and once a horse, in
“happening” anti-war performances in the late 1960s, which got some
people arrested for obscenity but helped get media attention for her
art. While in New York, she befriended artists like Andy Warhol,
Georgia O’Keeffe and Joseph Cornell, who praised her innovative
style.
Over the years, Kusama made quirky but stunningly celebratory works
like “Macaroni Girl,” a female figure plastered with macaroni, which
expresses the fear of food; “The Visionary Flowers,” giant
sculptures of twisting tulips, and “Mirrored Corridor,” a room with
mirrors that delivers an illusion of a field of phallic protrusions
speckled with dots.
Kusama, who has also made films and published several novels, said
she wasn’t sure where she got her ideas. She just picked up her
brush and started drawing. The process was so mysterious sometimes
she surprised herself, she told AP.
“I think, ‘Oh, I drew that? I was thinking that,’” she said.
But she appeared happy to have her art be the focus of media
attention and praise, reading one of her poems to a reporter or
tackling her artworks with gusto for photos.
But she was also a charmingly disarming mix of vulnerability and
defiance, at one moment declaring herself “an artistic
revolutionary,” and then the next, mumbling: “I am so afraid, all
the time, of everything.”
Fans around the world share messages of loss
The news of her death was met with an outpouring of sadness from
around the world, including museums that had exhibited her works.
Fans and artists alike praised her courageous persistence in vowing
to continue creating art that, she said, will be recognized
thousands of years after her death.
Messages recognizing her death were sent from people throughout
Japan including Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike and Yoshitomo Nara, a
younger Japanese artist who has exhibited widely abroad.
“RIP Kusama-sensei,” Nara wrote on his X account, respectfully
calling her a teacher in Japanese.
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Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi contributed to this report.
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