Yayoi Kusama, one of the most influential and internationally recognized artists of our time, passed away in Tokyo on 14 August 2026 at the age of 97.

The Yayoi Kusama Museum and the Yayoi Kusama Foundation announced her passing on 27 August. In their official statement, they reflected on an extraordinary 97-year life devoted to artistic creation, noting that Kusama continued to paint until her final days and remained steadfast in her lifelong belief that love can save the world.

Born in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, Japan, in 1929, Kusama began making art at an early age. Recurring visions of dots, flowers and patterns that seemed to expand endlessly across her surroundings would later become fundamental to her artistic language. Through repetition and accumulation, she developed an intensely personal visual vocabulary that explored infinity, self-obliteration, the cosmos and the relationship between the individual and the universe.

Kusama moved to the United States in 1957 and soon established herself within New York’s avant-garde art scene. Her celebrated Infinity Nets, composed of endlessly repeated marks across the surface of the canvas, became an early expression of ideas that would occupy her throughout her career. During the 1960s, her practice expanded into sculpture, installation, performance, film and experimental happenings, placing her at the forefront of some of the most radical artistic developments of the period.

In 1965, Kusama created the first of what would become her iconic Infinity Mirror Rooms, transforming repetition into an immersive spatial experience. A year later, she presented Narcissus Garden alongside the 1966 Venice Biennale, installing hundreds of mirrored spheres outdoors. In 1993, she returned to Venice as the official representative of Japan, marking an important moment in the international reassessment of her work.