artwork
Yayoi Kusama (草間 彌生, Kusama Yayoi, born 22 March 1929) is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, and is also active in painting, performance, video art, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. Her work is based in conceptual art and shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut, pop art, and abstract expressionism, and is infused with autobiographical, psychological, and sexual content. She has been acknowledged as one of the most important living artists to come out of Japan, the world’s top-selling female artist, and the world’s most successful living artist. Her work influenced that of her contemporaries, including Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg.
What does the pumpkin mean to Yayoi Kusama?
Kusama began sketching pumpkins as a child in pre-war Japan as her parents had a seed-farm. She started to consider pumpkins as a symbol of her childhood and of fertility and life, affirming that pumpkins bring her ‘poetic peace’.
