Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama (1929) was born in Matsumoto, a small rural town in Japan, which in those years was still a very traditional country.
Yayoi grew up surrounded by fields.
Her family, important landowners, was dedicated to the cultivation and wholesale of both seeds and flowers.
Her mother always expected her daughter to become a wife and housewife as was the tradition for a woman, but Yayoi was always rebellious and had different plans.
From a very young age, her main activity was drawing, something her mother did not accept either.
At the age of 10, Yayoi suffered her first hallucination when she was in the countryside drawing: everything around her began to turn into thousands of dots that multiplied to infinity.
In order to overcome the fear and anxiety that this first crisis caused her, she began to represent everything as she had seen it, full of dots.
It is from that moment on that his hallucinations are the source of his art of repetition.
As a teenager she manages to convince her parents to study Fine Arts in Kyoto, and after finishing her studies she decides that she can no longer live in Japan if she wants to become the artist she really wants to be.
In addition, her hallucinations do not stop and her psychiatrist advises her to travel.
So in 1957, she decided to pack her bags with 2,000 drawings and move to New York, a city where everything that interested her in art was happening.
Her first works made in the studio she rents to work and live in are large dotted surfaces. Her situation during these first years is not easy: she is a woman and a foreigner, she does not know the language well, and although she has some good contacts, such as the already recognized artist Georgia O’Keeffe, she does not get the response she expects.
She also has to deal with her anxiety and mental problems.
Despite all these difficulties, Yayoi promised herself that she would become a famous artist and all her moves have been in that direction.
She was a pioneer in several artistic movements: performance, mirror rooms, soft sculptures, happenings, repetition of motifs in painting …..
Several male artists such as Warhol, Oldenburg, Lichtenstein… perhaps “appropriated” some of her ideas and did not let her figure shine as she deserved.
In 1976, he left New York because of his worsening mental health and returned to Japan where he settled in a psychiatric clinic where he still resides today, but he never stopped working and creating.
In those years he began to write novels, short stories and poetry.
It is not until almost the 90’s in which several retrospectives are made that she begins to capture the attention of the public, even becoming the artist invited to represent Japan at the Venice Biennale (something she had already done in 1966 without being invited with the same artistic proposal, “The Garden of Narcissus”.
Since 2012 its fame and recognition have not stopped growing.
Everyone recognizes his giant flowers and pumpkins.
Exhibitions in major contemporary art museums worldwide summon thousands of people who queue for hours to enjoy a minute in her “Infinity Rooms” and to photograph and share it on social networks.
That is why she is currently the most popular artist in the world.
Yayoi Kusama is currently 95 years old, but she still works 8 hours a day and participates and attends all the exhibitions organized around the world.
