Kusama, Yayoi

Born on 22 March into a conservative family dedicated to the cultivation of seeds, in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture (Japan), where she grew up surrounded by vast flower fields.

During World War II, she works in a parachute factory with other girls from her class. In the factory, she learns to sew, a skill that she will incorporate into her artistic practice later.

Moves to Kyoto with the intention of studying at Shiritsu Bijutsu Kōgei Gakkō, a preparatory school for entry into the Kyoto Faculty of Fine Arts. Her frustration with the conservatism of art studies leads her to teach herself oil painting.

Two solo exhibitions on Kusama’s work are held in Tokyo.

Participates in a collective exhibition in the USA  at the International Watercolor Exhibition, 18th Biennale organised by the Brooklyn Museum in New York.

Travels to Seattle with some smaller scale pieces. After exhibiting at the Dusanne gallery, she sells some of her work and decides to move to New York, the centre of the international avant-garde, where she hopes to find an audience that better understands her art.

Her first solo exhibitions are held in New York and Boston. In both, she shows for the first time the series of works that will later become known as Infinity Nets and which critics will praise.

Curator Udo Kultermann includes some of Kusama’s pieces in the collective exhibition Monochrome Malerei, held at the Städtisches Museum in Leverkusen, Germany.

Opens her first solo exhibition at the Stephen Radich Gallery (New York), including her Infinity Nets.

Creates her first sculptures by covering furniture with soft structures, made with stuffed fabric and painted white.

Exhibits at the Richard Castellane Gallery, where she presents her first mirror room, Infinity Mirror Room – Phalli’s Field.

Presents her first outdoor installation Narcissus Garden at the Venice Biennale. The event organisers interrupted this unauthorised action.

Begins to create multimedia performances based on her new concept of self-obliteration.

Organises happenings both in her studio and in public; most consist of painting polka dots on naked bodies.

The film Kusama’s Self-obliteration wins several awards at the fourth edition of the Belgian International Experimental Film Festival, the Ann Arbor Film Festival (Michigan) and the second edition of the Maryland Film Festival.

She sets up her own firm—Kusama Fashion Company Ltd—and begins selling her designs at Bloomingdale’s.

Stages her Grand Orgy to Awaken the Dead at MoMA (Otherwise Known as the Museum of Modern Art)—Featuring Their Usual Display of Nudes). The museum’s security guards eject the artist.

Returns to Japan for the first time with the intention of carrying out more nude happenings, which do not generate the expected attention.

Joseph Cornell, her best friend in the US dies. A year and a half later, she will have to face the loss of her father, Kamon.

Constructed mainly from collages, Message of Death from Hades is her first solo exhibition after moving back permanently to Japan.

In later years, a series of individual exhibitions will be opened in Japan, and Kusama will become critical of the American art world.

Publishes her first novel, Manhattan Suicide Addict.

Is a key year for Kusama’s career, as she begins to be represented by the famous Fuji Television Gallery, which would hold an individual show of her work and continue to exhibit her pieces regularly. Her previous work, which had previously damaged the artist’s reputation, starts to be validated.

Achieves her first major success following a happening at the Video Gallery SCAN in Tokyo. Self–Obliteration is broadcast on television and is considered one of the most remarkable artistic events of the year.

Publishes her second novel, The Hustler’s Grotto of Christopher Street.

Publishes her third novel, Sento Marukusu Kyōkai enjō (The Burning of St. Mark’s Church).

The first retrospective of her work is organised by the Municipal Museum of Art in Kitakyushu.

Her first international retrospective (Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective) is held at the Center for International Contemporary Arts (CICA) in New York.

Participates in the 45th Venice Biennale, this time officially. Kusama is the first female artist to have a solo exhibition in the Japanese pavilion.

Her work is featured in the exhibition Japanese Art After 1945: A Scream Against the Sky, the first time that postwar Japanese art has been exhibited in the US. The exhibition then travels to the Yokohama Museum of Art; and, between 1995 and 1995, to the Guggenheim Museum SoHo in New York and the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Japan Art Foundation, in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art in New York, put on the exhibition Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958–1968, exploring Kusama’s contributions to the artistic movements of the 1960s. The exhibition is shown the same year in both museums, as well as at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. The following year, it travels to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo.

A touring exhibition organised by Le Consortium, Dijon, travels to five exhibition spaces in Europe and two in Korea. The exhibition includes Infinity Room—Fireflies on the Water, Kusama’s first mirror room in the 21st century.

Publishes her autobiography Infinity Net. The autobiography of Yayoi Kusama, a summary of texts she has developed throughout her career.

At the fourth edition of the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, held in Brisbane, Australia, she is presented as a key figure in contemporary art. She has an individual exhibition devoted to her work, including a new mirror room, Soul under the Moon, as well as an interactive installation entitled The Obliteration Room.

She is named an officer of the Order of Arts and Letters of France.

The National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo organises the largest retrospective of her work so far, Yayoi Kusama: Eternity-Modernity, which will travel to the Kyoto Museum of Modern Art, the Hiroshima Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art, the Kumamoto Museum of Contemporary Art and the Matsumoto Municipal Museum of Art.

She is awarded the Praemium Imperiale, presented annually by the Japan Art Association.

Première of the documentary Near Equal: Yayoi Kusama-I Adore Myself, directed by Takako Matsumoto, who recorded Kusama while working on the Love Forever series.

Begins a new series of paintings, My Eternal Soul.

Creates Transmigration, one of her largest paintings to date.

The Yayoi Kusama retrospective is held, curated by Frances Morris, director of the international collection at the Tate Modern in London. The exhibition opens at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, travels to the Pompidou Centre in Paris and arrives at the Tate Modern in 2012, completing its tour that same year at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

She is named a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Kusama’s position as one of the most popular artists globally is reaffirmed through a number of touring exhibitions, such as Infinite Obsession, which travels to Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Chile; and Yayoi Kusama: A Dream I Dreamed, which visits different cities in South Korea, China and Taiwan.

She receives the Order of Culture, one of the highest civil honours awarded by the Imperial Family of Japan.

The Yayoi Kusama Museum, directed by Akira Tatehata, opens in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district. The first exhibition is Creation Is a Solitary Pursuit, Love Is What Brings You Closer to Art. Infinity Mirrors, organised by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC, offering a panoramic view of the Mirror Rooms of Infinity.

A comprehensive retrospective of Kusama’s work is held for the first time in Germany, organised in Berlin by Gropius Bau, which will then travel to the Tel Aviv Art Museum.

London’s Tate Modern presents Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms.

The exhibition Yayoi Kusama: From 1945 to today opens, presented in November at the M+, Hong Kong, and which will later be hosted by the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao in 2023.

Her work is included in Sections/intersections. 25 years of the Guggenheim Museum Collection in Bilbao organised to commemorate the museum’s 25th anniversary and consisting of works belonging to its collections.