Yayoi Kusama

Private Collection, Tokyo

This work is in very good condition overall. There is evidence of very light handling and wear around the edges. Otherwise, there are no apparent condition problems with this work. The sheet is cornered into to the mount at the corners. Framed under Plexiglas.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Throughout Yayoi Kusama’s extensive career, she has continuously innovated and re-invented her style. Celebrated for her repeated dot patterns, her artistic output encompasses an astonishing variety of media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, film, performance and immersive installation. Ranging from works on paper featuring intense semi-abstract imagery, to her Accumulation sculptures and environments, to her Infinity Net paintings with their dense painterly, continuous arc-like patterns, her oeuvre is truly reaching and remarkable. Since 1977, Kusama has voluntarily lived in a psychiatric institution, and much of her work has been marked with an obsessiveness and a desire to escape from psychological traumas. Her installations immerse the viewer in her obsessive vision of an endlessness through dots, nets or infinitly mirrored spaces, sharing her psychological experiences with her viewers.

 

From rural Japan to the New York art scene in 1957 and back to contemporary Tokyo, Kusama has explored her identity as an outsider - as a female artist in a male-dominated society, as a Japanese person in the Western art world, and as a victim of her own neurotic and obsessional symptoms. After achieving fame and notoriety with groundbreaking art happenings and events in New York, she returned to her country of birth in 1973 and is now Japan’s most prominent contemporary artist. Recently, Kusama has achieved great fame and recognition in Europe and the United States  with a retrospective that travelled to the Reina Sofía, Madrid, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Tate Modern, London and most recently the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Sotheby’s is honored to offer the following works for sale which span decades of the artist’s career and exemplify the series for which she is renowned. The quality and array of the following works stand as a true testament to Kusama’s expansive and extraordinary output.