Yayoi Kusama saw polka dots before she knew what they were.
She was ten years old when the hallucinations began: spots that covered walls, tables, and her mother’s body.
Instead of hiding from them, she began to paint them. That woman, the same one who beat her and forced her to spy on her unfaithful father, would later destroy her paintings. Kusama kept painting polka dots.
In 1990, she voluntarily admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo, where she lived for the rest of her life, crossing the street every morning to a studio where she continued working.
That was where her giant pumpkins and infinity mirror rooms were born, which millions of people lined up to see without knowing they were entering the mind of a woman who had spent ninety years trying to give shape to her own horror.
She died on August 14, 2026, at the age of 97 in a Tokyo hospital. Her foundation confirmed the news thirteen days later. It never revealed the cause. She painted, according to them, until the end.