Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama was born in Matsumoto in 1929 and moved to New York in 1958, where her Infinity Net paintings, soft sculptures and happenings placed her at the centre of the avant-garde alongside Pop and Minimalism. Back in Tokyo from 1973, she worked for decades from a studio near the hospital where she lived, producing polka dots, pumpkins and Infinity Mirror Rooms that made her one of the most popular living artists in the world. She died in Tokyo on 14 August 2026, aged 97. Her market is among the deepest of any Asian artist, active in New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo at every price level; the record is Untitled (Nets) of 1959, sold for US$10.5 million at Phillips New York in 2022.