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Yayoi Kusama, one of the world's most celebrated contemporary artists, died at age 97, her company announced Thursday, prompting tributes worldwide.
Known as the "polka dot queen," the Japanese artist transformed decades of hallucinations and mental health struggles into vibrant works built around her signature dots, nets and infinity motifs. Her career spanned continents and disciplines, from painting to performance, fiction and poetry.
Kusama's company said she died in a hospital in Tokyo, announcing her death on Aug. 14. "She continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her brush," the company said in a statement, adding that she remained focused on themes of "forever love and eternal soul" throughout her life.
Born in 1929 to a wealthy and conservative family, Kusama began producing her distinctive art at age 10. In her autobiography, she described seeing a red flower pattern from a tablecloth spread across the ceiling, windows and pillars of a room, an experience that shaped her lifelong artistic vocabulary.
After studying art in Japan, Kusama moved to the United States in the late 1950s. With encouragement from artist Georgia O'Keeffe, she quickly became a fixture of New York's avant-garde scene, gaining recognition for large-scale paintings and provocative happenings in the 1960s that combined body painting with polka dots, despite facing discrimination as both a Japanese immigrant and a woman in a male-dominated art world.
She also launched a fashion line, founded a group she called the "Church of Self-Obliteration" and, styling herself the "High Priestess of Polka Dots," officiated at a gay wedding.
Kusama returned to Japan in the 1970s and voluntarily entered a Tokyo psychiatric hospital, where she lived and continued to work for the rest of her life.
Her profile rose again from the 1980s onward, and she became instantly recognizable in her bright red wig and bold spotted outfits. Her infinity mirror rooms, pumpkin sculptures, including a well-known installation on the Japanese art island of Naoshima, and immersive exhibitions continued to draw large crowds and have sold for millions of dollars at auction.
At the Yayoi Kusama Museum in Tokyo, visitors gathered Thursday after news of her death broke. Ai Kono, 50, told AFP she had traveled from Yokohama with her 10-year-old daughter to see Kusama's work when she learned of the artist's passing, calling her a woman of persistence who lived a long and fulfilling life.
Apple CEO Tim Cook also paid tribute, describing Kusama on social media platform X as a visionary whose work expanded the boundaries of contemporary art and left the world more vibrant.
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