Acclaimed Japanese avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama has died at the age of 97, her official website has announced.
A statement published on Thursday morning read: "It is with profound sorrow that the passing of Yayoi Kusama at a hospital in Tokyo on August 14, 2026, at the age of 97."
"Throughout an extraordinary lifetime devoted entirely to artistic creation, Kusama pursued an internationally acclaimed career as a pioneering avant-garde artist whose creative practice encompassed visual art, performance, fiction, and poetry."
One of the world's most recognisable artists, Kusama worked primarily in sculpture and installation and was one of the most significant creatives to emerge from Japan.
One of her paintings fetched about $10.5m at auction in 2022, making her works some of the highest-earning in the world for a female artist.
During her eight-decade career, she influenced other artists, including the American pop artists Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg.
Kusama was born on March 22, 1929, in Matsumoto, Nagano, Japan, and started creating art at a young age. She used drawing and painting to cope with the visual and auditory hallucinations she experienced.
The dots that would become her defining style were representations of her childhood hallucinations, where vivid patterns and polka dots obscured her vision.
Kusama used these dots to decorate large-scale pumpkin sculptures and as points of light filling her Infinity Mirror Rooms, designed to appear endless.
