Pumpkin
View Similar Items
Yayoi KusamaPumpkin1982
1982
About the Item
- Creator:Yayoi Kusama (1929, Japanese)
- Creation Year:1982
- Dimensions:Height: 10.63 in (27 cm)Width: 13.19 in (33.5 cm)
- Medium:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Tokyo, JP
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU2173212740982
Yayoi Kusama
Widely inspirational and innovative artist Yayoi Kusama has a body of work that is exceptionally varied, ranging from graphic prints and paintings to polka-dot pumpkin sculptures, hypnotic collages, large-scale installations and fashion design.
Even if you don’t know her name, you’ve likely experienced Kusama’s art — or have seen it on Instagram. Her soft sculptures and dazzling “Infinity Mirrors” are the stuff of selfie-takers’ dreams, but Kusama’s impressive decades-long career certainly holds far more cachet than it does fodder for today’s aspiring social-media influencers.
Born in Matsumoto, Japan, in 1929, Kusama has worked with her signature polka dots since the age of 10, when she began to experience vivid hallucinations and claimed that patterns and dots were moving around her, swallowing up everything in view. She started to incorporate them into her paintings as a child. Kusama saw circular forms and nets on every surface and became especially fascinated with the pebbles that lined the bottom of the creek near her childhood home. Her family was sternly opposed to her art and her mother physically abused Kusama and discouraged her at a very early age. She has suffered psychological turmoil her whole life and is vocal about her mental illness. Today, Kusama is a voluntary resident at a psychiatric facility in Tokyo, and she calls her work “art medicine.”
At the Kyoto School of Arts and Crafts, Kusama trained in Nihonga, a traditional style of Japanese painting that originated during the Meiji period. On advice she solicited from painter Georgia O'Keeffe, a pioneer of modernism in America whom she greatly admired, she subsequently moved to New York City in 1958. There, Kusama flourished, creating prescient sculptures and large-scale monochrome paintings that bridged current styles with minimalism, which hadn’t yet achieved any kind of prominence as an art movement. She pushed boundaries with her “Accumulations” series, which saw her transforming found furniture pieces into sexualized objects, as well as with an avant-garde staging of theatrical orgies on the street — both stemming from her anxieties about sex as well as an endeavor to make a feminist statement about patriarchal authority and sexism.
Kusama was captivated by Surrealists as well as the Abstract Expressionists and greatly influenced the Pop artists who followed, befriending such icons as Donald Judd — who called her work “the best paintings being done” — and Andy Warhol, with whom she exhibited and later accused of stealing her ideas. Kusama moved with ease through artistic circles and made a point to draw attention to her “otherness” as a Japanese woman by wearing kimonos to her openings.
In 2021, Kusama brought her floral and vegetal sculptures to the New York Botanical Garden and her works can be found in the collections of many of the world’s top museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. She famously collaborated with Louis Vuitton in 2012, and she created a 34-foot-tall balloon for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in Manhattan in 2019, becoming the first female artist to design a work for the event. In addition to her visual artwork, Kusama is a writer, publishing poetry, novels and an autobiography.
Find a collection of Yayoi Kusama art on 1stDibs.
- Vegetarian Vegetable, from Campbell's Soup IIBy Andy WarholLocated in Tokyo, 13LOT:20230223EM01 Signed by the artist and numbered with a rubber stamp on the reverse Edition 113 of 250 Printer: Salvatore Silkscreen Co., Inc., New York Publisher: Factory Addition...Category
1960s Still-life Prints
MaterialsScreen
- UntitledLocated in Tokyo, 13LOT:20220218M01 Ayako Rokkaku [Untitled] Signed, dated and numbered Edition of 75 Provenance: Museum of Contemporary Art, Karuizawa (Japan)Category
2010s Portrait Prints
MaterialsLithograph
Price Upon Request - ELVIS COSTELLOLocated in Tokyo, 13LOT:20220115M08 Atsushi Kaga [ELVIS COSTELLO] Lithograph on Somerset paper Signed by the artist Edition of 20 COA will accompany this workCategory
2010s Animal Prints
MaterialsLithograph
Price Upon Request - IN MILANO (set of 5)By Lee UfanLocated in Tokyo, 13LOT:20221130S02 Each: by the artist, dated '92 and numbered Each: Edition 48 of 50 Each: 150.0 × 90.0 cm Printer and publisher: Grafica Uno, Girgio Upiglio in Milano Catalogue Raisonné: LEE UFAN...Category
1990s Abstract Prints
MaterialsDrypoint, Lithograph
Price Upon Request - THE MEMORY OF MINE IBy Lee UfanLocated in Tokyo, 13LOT:20221130S01 Signed by the artist and dated '84 Edition of 50 + AP Edition 10 63 x 86 / 53 x 68 cm (Sheet/Image) Printer: Masashi Ozaki Publisher: Shirota Gallery Catalogue Raisonné: LEE UFAN...Category
1980s Abstract Prints
MaterialsLithograph
Price Upon Request - Cant de la CardinaBy Joan MiróLocated in Tokyo, 13LOT:20230708N03 Artist signed and numbered Edition 46/75 Catalogue Raisonné: Maeght 1200, p.26 of the catalog Provenance: Mallet Japan, Tokyo in September 2019Category
1980s Abstract Prints
MaterialsLithograph
Price Upon Request
- In the CloudBy Yoshitomo NaraLocated in Bristol, GBLithograph in colours, on Arches paper, with full margins Edition of 150 42.2 x 33 cm (16.6 x 12.9 in) Signed, numbered and dated on the front Mint. Artwork not inspected outside of ...Category
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Still-life Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Dracena IIBy Ellsworth KellyLocated in New York, NYPrinter: Gemini, G.E.L., Los Angeles Publisher: Gemini, G.E.L., Los Angeles Catalogue raisonné: Axsom 213 Edition size: 30, plus proofs Signed and numbered in pencil, lower rightCategory
1980s Minimalist Still-life Prints
MaterialsLithograph
Price Upon Request - Leaf IVBy Ellsworth KellyLocated in New York, NYPortfolio: Twelve Leaves Printer and Publisher: Gemini, G.E.L., Los Angeles Edition size: 20, plus proofs Signed, titled, and numbered in pencil, lower right Catalogue Raisonné: Axso...Category
1970s Contemporary Still-life Prints
MaterialsLithograph
Price Upon Request - Leaf XIBy Ellsworth KellyLocated in New York, NYPrinter and Publisher: Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles Edition size: 20, plus proofs Catalogue Raisonné: Axsom 176 Signed, titled, and numbered in pencil, lower marginCategory
1970s Still-life Prints
MaterialsLithograph
Price Upon Request - Notepad Doodle 3, State IIIBy Jonas WoodLocated in London, GBLithograph in colours, on grey Magnani Pescia paper. Published in 2018. Limited edition 20/20. Co-published in 2018 by WKS Editions and Hamilton Press, Los Angeles. Hand signed and n...Category
2010s Contemporary Still-life Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Dish of Apples and PearsBy Marsden HartleyLocated in Provincetown, MAMarsden Hartley is a seminal figure in American arts even eighty-plus years after his death. Hartley was a member of Alfred Stieglitz’s groundbreaking circle and painted easel-sized ...Category
Early 20th Century American Impressionist Still-life Prints
MaterialsLithograph
Recently Viewed
View AllRead More
This Hypnotic Yayoi Kusama Collage Seems to Reach beyond the Canvas
In Repetition GL.A, polka-dotted protuberances rise from a surface of rippling net. Here’s what makes the piece so rare.
Yoshitomo Nara Puts a Punk Rock Twist on the Traditional Prints of His Ancestors
The forever-rebellious Japanese artist craftily defaces famous Edo Period woodblock prints with “In the Floating World.”