Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama is recognized as one of Japan's best-known, most versatile, and internationally successful artists. In the mid-60s her work was mentioned in the same breath as Minimal Art, monochrome painting, and the new trends in Europe, and she was also seen as a forerunner of Pop Art. Noted for her soft sculptures and psychedelic installations, Kusama explores themes of love, infinity, and obsession throughout her work, from her net-like pattern paintings begun in 1959, to her Pop-inspired love happenings in the 1960s, to installations in which every surface has been compulsively covered in polka-dots, mirrors, or stuffed phallus-like protrusions.