Yayoi KUSAMA

Born in Nagano prefecture in 1929. Kusama started to paint using dots and nets as motifs at the age of ten for cure for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Studied Japanese painting at Kyoto City High School of Arts and Crafts, graduated in 1949. She left her native country at the age of 27 for New York City in 1957. She quickly established her reputation as a leader in the avant-garde movement by her paintings and soft sculptures. In the later 1960s she organized outlandish happenings such as body paintings and anti-war demonstrations. She returned to Japan in ill health in 1973. Her artwork is infused with autobiographical, psychological, and sexual content, and includes paintings, soft sculptures, performance art and installations.

Solo exhibitions at museums in Dole and Calais, France in 1986, New York and Oxford, England in 1989.
Kusama represented Japan at the Venice Biennale in 1993, and in 1998 & 1999 a major retrospective exhibition of her work toured the U.S. and Japan.
In 2000, Kusama won The Education Minister's Art Encouragement Prize and Foreign-Minister's Commendations. Received the Asahi Prize in 2001, Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2003

Official Web Site
http://www.yayoi-kusama.jp/