Yayoi KUSAMA

Yayoi Kusama – Biography, Screenprints and Original Prints

Yayoi Kusama was born in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, on 22 March 1929 and died in Tokyo on 14 August 2026, aged 97. Few artists of her generation have reached so wide a public: her Infinity Net paintings, polka dots, pumpkins and mirrored Infinity Rooms run from the New York avant-garde of the 1960s to the great museum retrospectives of the 2010s and 2020s, not least at Tate Modern. From 1979 she also built a substantial body of original prints – chiefly screenprints, with lithographs, etchings and woodcuts – which today forms one of the most actively traded, and most widely forged, corners of the contemporary print market.

Le Coin des Arts follows Yayoi Kusama’s work and offers her original prints as they become available, chosen for quality of impression, edition, documented provenance and condition. To be told when a new work arrives, simply ‘follow the artist’ on this page.

A seed nursery in Matsumoto (1929-1957)

Kusama grew up in Matsumoto, where her family ran a plant nursery and seed business – flowers, seeds and gourds would recur throughout her work. In 1948 she left home to study nihonga, traditional Japanese-style painting, for about a year at the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts. Her first exhibitions came in 1952, followed by solo shows in Matsumoto and Tokyo. By the mid-1950s she was writing to Georgia O’Keeffe, asking for advice on how to make her way in the American art world.

New York and the European avant-garde (1957-1973)

She left Japan in 1957, showing first at the Zoe Dusanne Gallery in Seattle before settling in New York in 1958. Her solo exhibition at the Brata Gallery in 1959 – vast canvases covered in white nets – was warmly reviewed by Donald Judd; both Judd and Frank Stella bought paintings from the show, and in 1961 she moved her studio into the building where Judd and the sculptor Eva Hesse also worked. Soft sculptures and Accumulations followed. Her reputation soon crossed the Atlantic: in 1962 she was the only woman in the international Nul exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, alongside the ZERO artists. In the mid-1960s she made her first mirrored rooms; in 1966 she showed Narcissus Garden, a field of reflective spheres, at the Venice Biennale. Her late-1960s happenings – painted bodies, street actions and, in 1969, a performance in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art – made her a figure of the counterculture.

Tokyo, writing and the first prints (1973-1993)

Kusama returned to Japan in 1973. In 1977 she chose to take up residence in a Tokyo hospital, where she lived for the rest of her life while working daily in her studio – a decision she spoke about openly herself. She wrote poetry and novels, beginning with Manhattan Suicide Addict (1978), and in 1979 exhibited her first prints. A New York retrospective organised by Alexandra Munroe in 1989 began the critical reappraisal, and in 1993 she represented Japan at the Venice Biennale.

London, Tate and worldwide recognition (1998-2026)

Her British story is closely tied to Victoria Miro, which has exhibited her work since 1998, with London exhibitions including those of 2007 and 2016. Phaidon published a major monograph in London in 2003 (Laura Hoptman, Akira Tatehata, Udo Kultermann). The turning point was the retrospective organised by Tate Modern with the Museo Reina Sofía: shown in Madrid and at the Centre Pompidou, it opened at Tate Modern on 9 February 2012 and ran until 5 June, curated by Frances Morris with Rachel Taylor, before travelling to the Whitney Museum in New York. That year also brought an illustrated edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for Penguin Classics and a first collaboration with Louis Vuitton. Tate Modern returned to her with Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms, on view from 18 May 2021 to 28 April 2024. She received the Praemium Imperiale in 2006, her museum opened in Tokyo in 2017, and major shows continued to the end – M+ in Hong Kong (2022), the Guggenheim Bilbao (2023), the Fondation Beyeler (2025-26) and Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2026). According to her studio, she kept painting until shortly before her death.

Kusama’s printmaking: pumpkins, nets and ‘Love Forever’

Kusama’s editions belong to her Japanese years. Her first two prints, including Standing in the Visionary Field, were published in 1979. Screenprinting suited her art perfectly: flat, saturated colour and endlessly repeated dots, nets and petals. Pumpkins, flowers, hats and waves recur across the catalogue, alongside lithographs (Pumpkin, 1982, lithograph with collage), monochrome etchings and woodcuts, notably a Mount Fuji series made using ukiyo-e woodblock techniques. The large black-and-white Love Forever screenprints of the mid-2000s are among her most ambitious suites, and repetition itself – the same motif multiplied across the sheet – is the logic that links her prints to her paintings and installations. The Matsumoto City Museum of Art, which holds one of the largest collections of her prints, staged the first exhibition devoted to them in 2022; it travelled to Kagoshima (2024) and to Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art (2025, around 330 works). The standard reference is the catalogue raisonné Kusama Yayoi zen hangashū / All Prints of Kusama Yayoi 1979-2004 (Tokyo, Abe Shuppan, 2005); dealers usually cite a print as ‘Abe’ followed by its plate number.

Collecting Yayoi Kusama prints: a buyer’s guide

Forgeries first. In September 2026 the Tokyo gallery Ota Fine Arts warned of a sharp rise in counterfeit Kusama works – mainly prints – sold at auction, online and through dealers in Japan and abroad, sometimes with forged Ota labels, invoices and certificates. In 2018 the artist’s foundation had already condemned exhibitions of fakes in China.

Registration cards. The registration system run by Kusama Yayoi Co., Ltd. expressly excludes editions such as prints and does not answer enquiries about them; even for unique works, a registration card is not a certificate of authenticity. Treat any print offered with a ‘studio certificate’ with great caution.

The catalogue raisonné. Title, date, medium, sheet size, paper and edition size should all match the catalogue entry. A number outside the recorded edition is a warning sign.

Signature and numbering. Most editions are signed and numbered in pencil, often titled and dated as well – see the signature and the printing.

Provenance. A publisher’s or identifiable gallery’s invoice, or a published auction record, matters as much as the image. Be wary of prices far below public results.

Not original prints. Posters, digital reproductions, museum merchandise and fashion collaborations are not original prints.

Condition. Large flat screenprinted areas show scuffs, creases and fading readily; ask to see the sheet out of its frame. See our notes on authenticity and framing.

We only take on a Kusama print with verifiable provenance and an exact match to the catalogue raisonné. You may also enjoy Kumi Sugai, Yves Klein, Niki de Saint Phalle, Roy Lichtenstein and Sam Francis, or browse contemporary art and our prints and lithographs.

Sources and further reading

Frances Morris and Jo Applin, Yayoi Kusama, London, Tate Publishing, 2012 · Laura Hoptman, Akira Tatehata and Udo Kultermann, Yayoi Kusama, London, Phaidon, 2003 · Kusama Yayoi zen hangashū / All Prints of Kusama Yayoi 1979-2004, Tokyo, Abe Shuppan, 2005 · Tate – Yayoi Kusama, 2012 · Victoria Miro – Yayoi Kusama, 2016 · Yayoi Kusama – official website · Ota Fine Arts – notice on counterfeit works · Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art – Print Works