Artist
Yayoi Kusama
Widely recognized for her deep penetrating stare, avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama is regarded by many as Japan's greatest living artist. Born in Matsumoto, Japan, in 1929, Yayoi Kusama is one of the most fascinating figures in international contemporary art. She started to paint around the age of 10, using polka dots and net motifs, creating fantastical watercolors, pastels, and oils. Now boasting an incredible and influential career that spans some six decades, Kusuma has been affected by mental illness since early childhood, a condition fueling her hallucinogenic, repetitious dot and net filled paintings and sculptures. Kusama lived in the United States from 1957-1973, where she became a pioneer of large, 'soft sculpture' installations and environments, as well as staged radical
happenings and anti-war demonstrations, as well as other media-related activities such as film production and newspaper publication. Kusama won the Education Minister's Art Encouragement Prize and Foreign-Minister's Commendations in 2000; the Asahi Prize in 2001; and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2003. 100 Tonson Gallery represents Yayoi Kusama in Thailand.
