Yayoi Kusama’s most iconic artworks featuring her signature polka dots

Rosie Slater Thu, August 27, 2026 at 8:51 AM UTC

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The celebrated contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama has died aged 97 in a Tokyo hospital. Her pieces were displayed in major museums across the globe.

Recurring shapes formed her distinctive trademark, above all dots that enlivened canvases or shone as luminous balls and specks of light within her installations.

Yayoi Kusama poses for a photograph inside her Infinity Mirrored Room installation titled ‘The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away.’ (Reuters)

Diminutive and known for sporting a scarlet bob wig later in life, Kusama was candid about her mental health struggles, saying she experienced visions and hallucinations of flashing lights, dots and `flowers since childhood. "I still see hallucinations even now," ​she ⁠told reporters in 2017.

Exhibition assistant Kathrin DuBois of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne arranges chess board figures of the installation 'Pumpkin Chess' in the Porzellanikon Museum in Selb, southern Germany. (2010 AP)

"Dots come flying everywhere — on my dress, the floor, things I'm carrying, throughout the house, the ceiling. And I paint them."

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. (Copyright 2026 The . All rights reserved.)

Kusama died in hospital on August 14, according to a statement by the Yayoi Kusama Museum, adding `that she continued to paint until her final days. No cause of death was given.

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A woman takes a photo during her visit at the art work 'The Spirits of the Pumpkins Descended into the Heavens' by Yayoi Kusama. (Copyright 2021 The . All rights reserved)

Born on March 22, 1929, in Matsumoto City, central Japan, Kusama had a troubled childhood marked by family conflict. She said ‌she was overwhelmed by fear and that it ‌reached the point where she wanted to die every day.

Yayoi Kusama speaks during an interview at her studio, filled with wall-sized paintings throbbing with her repetitive dots, in Tokyo. (Copyright 2026 The . All rights reserved.)

"What kept me from ending my life was drawing and making art. That has never changed. It was through discovering my love of art that I have been able to survive and continue living to this day," she said in a 2014 interview with Vogue Japan.

A man walks past a work ‘Pumpkin’ by Yayoi Kusama. (Copyright 2026 The . All rights reserved.)

During her school years, she was mentored by the Japanese painter Kakei Hibino and later went to the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts to study traditional Japanese painting.

Yayoi Kusama poses for photographers in front of her painting 'Love Arrives at the Earth Carrying with it a Tale of the Cosmos' (Copyright 2026 The . All rights reserved.)

Frustrated with the confining nature of Japanese society, Kusama left for New York in 1957. There, she quickly made a name for herself, exhibiting net paintings, soft sculptures, creating body painting events and happenings to protest the Vietnam War as well as writing fiction and poetry. She is often said to have influenced Andy Warhol.

'A Bouquet of Love I Saw in the Universe' by Yayoi Kusama (Copyright 2021 The . All rights reserved)

But ⁠her mental health declined and she returned to Japan in 1973, voluntarily entering ⁠a psychiatric hospital four years later where she continued to live, being driven to her nearby studio each morning.

A wax model of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is displayed in the windows of Louis Vuitton's flagship Fifth Avenue store in New York. (Copyright 2026 The . All rights reserved.)

Additional reporting by Reuters.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”